Purple
by kodak-85
Summary: It's hard learning to save peoples' lives when you're so busy trying to save your own. SasuNaru, non-con, AU, COMPLETE
1. Part 1

**Author's Note: **Jesus Christ. I started this and wrote ten pages in one sitting. Then I managed five. Then three. Then two, then one, then one again. Soon I was down to writing only paragraphs, sometimes sentences, at a time. I've worked on this for two months. Those who've read "Teeth", I haven't updated because I've been working on this monstrosity.

Extra warnings: This is not the giggly fangirl rape where Naruto falls to his knees. I've read some supposed 'rape' stories, perhaps for some reference as I've never written anything about it before, and found it disturbing at how lightly people take it. And also, fanfic writers, gay sex is not perfect. Most first times it's a downright disaster. It's messy, awkward, and downright painful. I can understand not wanting to ruin the scene, but I thought I'd share. I've even fictionalized the act of it in here, sugar-coating things. I don't want to go into nitty gritty detail. Did I just contradict myself?

Also, this is the clean version. The link to the un-cut version can be found in my profile. Enjoy.

--

"_In my field of paper flowers and candy clouds of lullaby, I lie inside myself for hours, and watch my purple sky fly over me."_

_-_Imaginary, by _**Evanescance**_

**Purple, 1 of 4**

Out of all the houses he'd been expecting, this was not it. It wasn't even a house at all; a penthouse suit, situated somewhere between the fourth and sixth stories of an eleven-story building, gleaming and new like a sore thumb in a metropolis of garbage and industrial wreck.

His messenger bag, khaki with frayed edges and broken buckles, was uncomfortable against his side. Sweat made his shirt glue itself to his skin like fly paper. His task set, his map in the form of a torn-out sheet of loose-leaf clenched in a fist with cracked knuckles, Naruto crossed the last street towards the Uchiha's complex.

_"Take this straight to him, Naruto," _his guardian's words continued to ring. _"No side trips. No stops. Straight. To him."_

_"I got it, I got it," _his own words echoed back, lacking just as much stability and sounding more like a recorded message on the answering machine. _"No side trips."_

There was a mat of gleaming red fur curled by the sewer, Naruto noticed, as he stepped over the chipped curb. Its mangled legs were furled in an almost graceful way, and its stomach was sinking in and starting to turn obsidian with rot. Copper fur was heavy with crisp, dried blood, and its black paws still seemed to claw at the pavement. The creatures eyes were shut, mouth slightly agape, and if it weren't for decomposition, Naruto would have taken it to be asleep. But its tail's bush had flattened to a snake-like center, and it had become a beautiful skeleton as opposed to a beautiful creation.

Wondering idly what a fox had been doing so far from its woods in the first place, Naruto waltzed up and through the swinging doors. The metal framework was stainless steel, very modern for a not-so-modern town.

But who would expect anything less of the great protégé Sasuke Uchiha?

The bastard's homework was settled somewhere in his bag. The fourteen-year-old, after not missing a single minute of class over the entire year, had been absent with no call nor notice for the past three days. Naruto's impromptu visit was more of a reassurance for the teachers that the star pupil of the class hadn't thrown himself out the window than to deliver homework the raven could have no doubt completed before the last bell of homeroom rang. Which threw Naruto for a complete loop; the guy couldn't speak a word of English when he'd first enrolled in Clifford Private School.

He'd been a dark, brooding thing that shone so brightly you couldn't help but notice him. His tongue was so foreign and something new to hear, like the catchy new song played over and over on the radio until it lost all appeal. At least for Naruto it did. For others, it grew more sickeningly addictive every day, and it was so obvious the youth didn't want the attention. But since when did things like that make a difference?

Middle school graduation was in three weeks, a small and uneventful ceremony made to please the parents rather than the students. A sense of accomplishment was more of a requirement, it seemed, than the basic four years of math and English. His guardian Iruka would, of course, be there. He was a teacher at the high school and seemed pleased (insultingly pleased) that Naruto had managed to claw his way out with a passing grade. Passing if you squinted.

That being said, while Naruto's legs skimmed awkwardly along the floor from his position on the bottom rung of the ladder, Sasuke sat so high up he was in danger of his high horse throwing him off.

The guy was Asian, so that could have been key, but did he have to graduate at the top of the class? He didn't speak a word of English when he'd first come, and honestly, Naruto wasn't so sure that he knew how to now. The two were in completely opposite classes. Sasuke joined in with the honors and AP classes for calculus and Physics, while Naruto was stuck with career-prep in Algebra 1 and Language and Composition. But even when they strayed paths in public settings, no words were spoken. Or in any sort of setting. The blonde was pretty sure the other had quite a colorful set of insults in his arsenal, though. Too bad they were all in Japanese.

But, hey, who needed words when you had fists?

There were some people Naruto couldn't help but like. He was attracted to them, and they to he, and through mutual attraction could form some sort of bond, whether fickle or iron-clad. Then there were the people who put a sick feeling in his stomach when he heard their force, made his fists clench whenever their eyes met.

Sasuke was one of the latter.

Naruto's eyes tightened at the memory of their first head-on collision. It took a week before their heated glares cooled and staled, no longer enough to sedate that unquenchable thirst for contact. For the feel of hard bone against furled knuckles, to feel hot breath as they got into each others face. To have foreign blood splash against their skin and to taste their own in kind. It was a short skirmish, half a minute before hall aids tore them apart, an unrefined quarrel that was more tugging hair and going for weak spots. Their spot was ostantuous and no good. They learned. They learned to dodge like a bullet and strike like a falcon, and learned to make use of quite and desolate spots. The math and science hallway after third period every fourth day of their six-day rotation. The old auditorium that had had a 'renovation' sign on it for over a year. The tiny network of alleys stripped the surrounding grounds like a cobweb.

Their fights continued, and the scale of bruises quickly began to tip in Sasuke's favor. Naruto sometimes avoided the hot spots, if nothing but to calm Iruka's worried face and his friends' anxious stares whenever he showed up with a fresh patch of shiny red surrounding his eye or his cheek.

Sasuke knew. He must have. He wore a sneer whenever Naruto took a shortcut, although the blond remained positive that no one followed him. Somehow, he knew. The bastard just knew.

Of course, Sasuke wasn't the only one Naruto found himself in regular skirmishes with. There were various options to pick from. The football jocks, the black kids with baggy clothes and bad music, the younger, scrawny kids who had more bark than bite but were so quick on their feet that keeping track of them was impossible, and holding onto them even harder. Plenty. Naruto supposed it was just something in his personality. Maybe he was labeled a poser for having a Japanese name with no heritage to back it up. Maybe it was his diminutive height that made him so easy to look down upon.

His sociology teacher had once told his class that for every person that liked you, there were at least two who did not. Naruto had yet to meet what was sure to be a huge flock of admirers, but looked forward to the day that he did.

But so far, he'd been stuck with the not-so-friendly crowd. Sometimes he wondered if even his friends hat strayed over to that side. But until then Naruto grinned and bore the title they'd given him with pride. 'Monster'. It was fitting, in a way. Monsters were vastly misinterpreted creatures, and always smarter than those who had created them.

The doorman raised an eyebrow at him. Naruto flashed a nonplussed grin and pointedly shifted his shoulder strap so that his pack swung against his hip. "I'm here to give Sasuke Uchiha some homework. He up there?"

The doorman waited a ridiculous amount of time before sniffing in distain and muttering, in an altogether too-prim voice for such a small town, "The young sir lives on the fourth floor. The elevator is down the hallway past the lobby desk."

Naruto waited, and under the expectant gaze, waited for further direction. Receiving nothing, he just nodded awkwardly and strode past him to the dim hallway by the dim desk.

"…Mr. Uchiha is still attending school?"

Naruto stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. Uchiha not going to school? Of course. And president Bush had found a cure for breast cancer through personal experience.

"Yeah. Why wouldn't he?"

He was beginning to grow annoyed by being looked at as if he were a tiny fraction of his age. "Ask him yourself."

"Fine!" Naruto snapped. He whirled around, determined not to stop even if spoken to. He was uninterrupted and made it to the elevator doors winded. And he couldn't tell why.

The ride upwards was smooth, but Naruto felt as if his stomach had remained rooted to the first floor. When the doors opened all the air had gone from Naruto's lungs and his chest felt ready to collapse.

_And he didn't know why._

Sasuke lived in apartment 409. The first eight was grouped like small complexes to one side of the vast building, 409 and 410 being the master suites, and the latter under construction. Ten rooms to a floor, all lain out in a similar fashion. All costing more than ten combined years of Iruka's pay, no doubt. It was sickening, the amount of money people spent on just an apartment.

Vaguely wondering if he would be able to find out what Sasuke's parents did for a living, he trailed along the short and stubby hallway with only two doors. He knocked on the first one and waited.

And waited.

He waited ten seconds, blinked, furrowed his brows, and knocked again.

Still no answer.

After the fifth set of knocks, by which time it had become more of a hammering, Naruto was considering just leaving the work by the door. The kid could come out and get it himself, couldn't he? But it was Miss Ghandi who'd given him this assignment. And it was Miss Ghandi who'd always favored slime above him and called his guardian to make sure he completed the task.

It was her ass he had to kiss now. Or so Naruto told himself.

There was also that frighteningly obvious curiosity that was digging its claws deeper and deeper into his skin, sniffing the air before him tentatively.

Before he knew it, the blond was twisting the unlocked doorknob and letting himself into the suite.

There was no evidence to the contrary, but Naruto had a feeling that not a drop of paint had adorned the walls since the Uchiha's had moved in. They were that same conformist white, a blank slate in which families could paint as they pleased. But these walls were still white. The floor was covered in lack-luster blue carpeting, cheap and also meant to be replaced. There were no photo frames on the walls. No TV in the living room, or what Naruto assumed to be the living room. There was a computer in the corner on a plain oak desk, but it was shut off. A two-seater sofa with an empty coffee table.

And, most importantly, only one pair of shoes by the door.

After sliding his own off and putting them next to the black loafers, Naruto slowly wondered through, looking around himself as he did. There was a short hallway. All three doors were shut. There was another spouting off to the side of the living room, also closed. Another door by the dining room where there sat a polished wooden table with only one chair, and no placemats. A large kitchen with many cabinets Naruto suspected were empty, an industrial-sized fridge, a dishwasher, lower cabinets, a toaster and microwave that looked like they'd come straight from the box mere seconds ago, and a booth with two built-in swivel chairs. One chair empty, the other full of sleeping boy with a collapsed head on the black marble surface.

Sasuke's face was turned away from him, but from the soft and steady rise and fall of his shoulders, Naruto could tell he was asleep. His normally orderly spikes (Naruto suspected copious amounts of hair gel to be at fault) were jumbled with bedhead. The black wife beater was a stark contrast to the usual immaculate white uniform shirt Naruto had always seen him in. He wore loose-fitting corduroy shorts and his feet were bare, curled where the toes met the floor.

Naruto had never noticed just how thin the guy was until now. They were at the age where they'd either started along with growth spurts or had to wait a year. Sasuke belonged to the former category, Naruto the latter. The raven-haired teenager was a good six inches taller than the blond, a definite advantage when it came to fighting.

But still… Tall or not, no one should be that skinny.

His arms were like wire, taught with thin muscle and not much else. His shirt folded into a concave stomach, and his knees were bony knobs, thin calves stretching too far to meet smallish feet. His skin looked too tight, too thin, to contain what it did. Naruto moved around to bend over the counter and peer at his closed eyelids, under which hung heavy purple pillows. Even his face, under such natural sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, looked sunken, like a skull.

On vacation to the Bahamas with Iruka two summers ago, Naruto remembered, they'd visited a small tourist trap down a block from their resort. It sold old voodoo dolls, shrunken heads, and various other artifacts manufactured to break soon after purchase. There had been one, a bleached skull with a puff of the softest black hair he'd ever seen. But when he reached out to touch it, Iruka had smacked his hand away, muttered something about counterfeiters, and dragged him from the shop before he'd gotten the chance to touch.

And now, with no hand to stop him, Naruto's hand, unbidden, reached out to give it a feather-soft stroke from part to the nape of his neck, and his fingers recoiled as if snapped at by a viper.

It was so damn _soft_. It felt like the down of a feather. Feather light to the touch, silky and smooth even in its knotted state. Naruto couldn't resist the temptation to touch it again, this time with a little more pressure. It was like dry water, the strands stroking the rough pads of his fingertips as if they had a mind of their own.

Again and again, from bangs to nape, parting easily and making a fork of hair that smoothed straight down, except for the stubborn tufts that refused to stay down at the back. Mesmerizing. It was mesmerizing. And in the sun, it seemed to have an almost blue hue to it. Hypnotized by the texture and the quite, Naruto allowed his hip to settle against the counter as he continued to pet the boy he'd traded more fists with than words.

It was more curiosity. Like stopping time to inspect the blade that was a mere second from slitting your throat. To study the intricate hilt, to run hands against the cool, silken steel of the blade, to study the symmetry while looking at it point-blank.

But it was something else, too. Something akin to control. Like his soft touches put the roaring beast to this picture of immobility, of fragile marble. That control poured from his fingertips.

And then a cold hand reached out and snatched his wrist, leaving his digits sunken into disheveled hair. Blank black eyes glared up at him for a moment, the smooth obsidian enflamed with a heated, passionate rage usually reserved for their fights.

The grip on his wrist tightened momentarily before lapsing to a gentle hold, allowing the blond to escape with his hand still attached. Sasuke Uchiha regarded him warily before speaking.

Naruto expected shouts, several well-chosen and colorful words, followed by a punch in the face. What rolled from his enemy's lips, however, was complete and total gibberish. His eyes were calm now, and his lips set into a thin line. Naruto noticed, again, how thin Sasuke's face was. His and many of his friends still contained a small bit of baby fat left on their cheeks and chin, but Sasuke looked more like a sixteen-year-old than a kid fresh out of puberty.

The blond blinked. "What?" He took the chance to take several casual steps backward, elongating the diminutive space between them. Giving himself space to breathe, but the room seemed to be lacking in oxygen nonetheless.

Sasuke smirked and repeated himself. More slowly. Still gibberish. Belatedly, Naruto realized he was speaking Japanese.

"Do I look Japanese to you, dumb ass?" he snapped, crossing his arms over his chest and hiding the way his hands shook beneath his armpits. Maybe he hadn't noticed. Maybe he'd forgotten. The first few moments after waking up were always a blur, weren't they?

The corners of his lips twitched slightly on one side, cocking itself up to one side. "Your name," he said, voice heavily accented. The 'your' slurred to the end, like he had a bad lisp, making it sound more like "you'll name." But his tone was a deep baritone, perhaps from sleep. Or maybe he was just mature for his age. Or maybe he lied about his age altogether.

"What about it?" was his anti-climactic response, after several long moments of contemplating the odd accent. His guardian was Japanese, but had no living relatives for Naruto to hear the native tongue of. Iruka, while perfectly fluent in the language, neglected to teach Naruto a word of it.

"It Japanese, dumb fuck."

Oh. Yeah, it was.

"My guardian named me. So what?"

Sasuke snorted, mumbled something too quietly for Naruto to discern between the two languages, and pushed himself away from the table before standing. Naruto arched his neck slightly to stare and took another awkward step back. Ignoring him, Sasuke went to the fridge and opened it, pondering its contents for a moment before throwing over his shoulder, "Drink, _dobe_?"

"Huh? Dlin--oh, drink?"

"Isn't that what I asked?"

Naruto snorted. "Your accent sucks, by the way. Can't hear a fucking word you're saying."

Smirking quietly, Sasuke merely replied, "You get used to it."

Frowning, Naruto shrugged, not knowing what to make of that. Did he mean anyone could live with it, or was it just Naruto? Then Sasuke tossed him a orange can, and catching it, the blonde noticed it was a Fanta. "You like orange soda?"

Sasuke grunted, and the blond wondered if even understood what he said. He popped the metal tab and took a deep swig, clearing out the bad taste that had caked itself over his tongue. The sweetness was welcomed, but reacted badly to the sourness that came with a dry mouth. Naruto hadn't noticed when he'd tensed up, but quickly wrote it off as unimportant, taking another swallow. It was cold, and his palms weren't sweating as much anymore. The distilled air was quiet and fuzzy, full of an energy that Naruto had thus far never encountered in the outside world.

This seemed like a different realm entirely. The way the orange light made the air syrupy and sweet, the emptiness making him feel claustrophobic, the quiet murmur of a foreign voice.

It wasn't Naruto's world anymore. It belonged to….

Sasuke fished himself out a bottle of water, and Naruto caught a glimpse of the fridge's contents before the door could swing shut. There was a half-finished gallon of milk, a thing of eggs, a mesh bag full of tomatoes, and a handful of other things Naruto could have counted on one hand. It was so bare--too bare, from what he'd seen of others fridges.

Squishing down the niggling thought in the back of his head that his refrigerator looked very much the same, Naruto asked the question that was much more prominent in his mind at the moment. Something any sane person would have asked the moment they'd woken up to find a hated-rival hovering over them.

"Aren't you gonna ask why I'm here?"

"Hn." Sasuke took his time twisting off the cap of his water bottle, taking a heavy gulp and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, "Homework, right?"

"How'd you know?"

"Iruka-_san_ is very thanking man," Sasuke said dismissively, but something in his tone twisted the compliment into a way that made it sound like being thoughtful was a bad thing. Which to the raven, Naruto thought, it probably was.

"You don't want to know how I got in here?"

Sasuke was definitely smirking now. "The door?" he said haughtily.

"Oh yeah!" Naruto sad the can of soda on the counter that he'd wondered over to. "Who the fuck leaves their doors wide open, anyway, huh? You're passed out on the table. Anyone could come right here and…"

"And what?" Sasuke whispered sardonically. "Pet me to death?"

Naruto's heart froze in place, and his stomach filled with sand as it dropped to the ground, making his knees stiffen to keep from buckling under his own weight.

Sasuke continued as if he'd said nothing out of the ordinary. "I have nothing here that would be any importance," he said in his strong accent, half the words flying over Naruto's head. "There is nothing here that any common thief will want." He cocked a slick black eyebrow. "Also, my door not 'wide open.' It shut. Most will knock."

"I did knock!" Naruto persisted. "Not my fault you didn't answer the door."

Sasuke waved his hand, dismissing the comment casually and settling himself against the refrigerator door.

More to fill in the abrupt silence than anything, Naruto asked, "When will your parents be home?"

"That is none of your business."

Naruto glared. "It was just a question, bastard. You don't have to answer if you don't want--"

"When will yours expect you home?" Sasuke cut him off, setting aside his bottle and looping his thumbs into the pockets of his shorts.

"I don't have 'parents'," Naruto snapped. "I have Iruka. And he expects me home whenever I drop this stuff off." Struck by the sudden thought, Naruto stooped down to his bag to retrieve the papers, to get this over with and get out. "Hold on, I have it right here." But when Naruto began to glance up, he saw a pair of feet right by his face. Looking up, Sasuke regarded him with cool obsidian eyes. "Hey, man, ever hear of personal space?"

Not only did Sasuke seem to not be able to grasp the concept, but the next moment, Naruto bag was sailing across the threshold and landing somewhere by the couch, courtesy of Sasuke's arm.

"Hey!" Naruto was back on his feet in a second, and a moment later had shoved Sasuke back a foot with his forearm, a knee-jerk reaction he'd grown accustomed to over the year. This was it. This was the invitation for a fight he's been unknowingly waiting for. His fists clenched before he struck one arm, pointing to hid fallen shoulder bag. "Go and get that."

Sasuke just stared at him, unfazed by the push. "No. I don't want the papers."

"I don't give a shit about the papers," Naruto snarled. "Go and get my freakin' _bag_."

"No," he repeated.

"Maybe you're hard of hearing, you stuck-up bastard, but I _said_…"

"I do not care what you said." A small pause, and Sasuke made an about face. "Why are you still here?"

"I'm still here so that I can give you your stupid make-up work because your lazy ass can't make its way into school! Just go and get my fucking bag so I can get out of here!" His arm dropped and mimicked the other in forming a threatening fist.

Sasuke snorted. "No. You don't want me to get that bag."

"I don't," Naruto repeated scathingly, sarcasm like heavy syrup drenching his words. "Then what is it I want, huh?"

Sasuke countered with an unrelated comment. "I've been expecting you to come here for while now." Naruto was too distracted by the fact that Sasuke was now moving towards the thrown bag to notice the oddness of his statement. "But really. I'd have never expected a homework excuse from you of all people…" His next few words were lost in a different language, and Naruto squinted in suspicion as Sasuke flipped open the bag to shuffle lethargically through the disorganized contents. The blond let him find the assignments on his own, remaining rooted to the spot. He felt that to go over would be awkward, that his place, for the moment, was to wait in shadow as Sasuke finally pulled out the leaflet of papers.

"Are these?" Sasuke waved them so they flapped gently from the current of thick air. Naruto nodded, noting in slight surprise he didn't feel even the smallest urge to correct the horrible English. Naruto's probably wasn't all that good anyway, and--

His train of though derailed abruptly as Sasuke tore the packet in two by the metal stable, and then, by papers in sets of twos and threes, ripped them to shreds and allowed them to flutter to the floor and scatter around his feet, under the sofa, through the legs of the chair….

Wide-eyed, Naruto could only watch as Sasuke gently discarded the bag by means of throwing it against the couch, where it gently rebounded from the high back and slumped over the couch cushion like a dead body.

"You appear to have lost the papers, Uzumaki-_kun_," Sasuke sneered, once again throwing the odd little phrase at the end of his name, as he did with most. "How thoughtless of you."

Words were only half-formed on the tip of his tongue, and slipping out of his rough lips too fast for him to piece together into coherent sentences. After garbling out nonsense that was neither English nor Japanese, his cheeks flushed red with rage. Iruka would blame him. The school would blame him. Somehow, the story would end up with him losing the papers down some sewers, or him spending the afternoon down at the arcade instead of making his promised delivery. Somehow, the bastard would make it so. Somehow, he could, and Naruto knew he would.

"You _bastard._" Deep breaths and a narrowing of cerulean eyes. "They're gonna blame me, ya know that? They're gonna fucking blame me you _asshole_." It didn't matter that insults made no difference. They made him feel better. His nails were painful as they dug rivets into his palms, but he couldn't cool himself down enough to unclench them.

Sasuke smirked and strode forward, cocking his head to the side like the perfectly pampered little dick he was and Naruto wanted to shoot a hole through that corner of his mouth that seemed to stay permanently suspended over the other corner, seeing that pale face hovering and looming over his. The condescending, smart-ass, mother-fucking ape shit bastard that….

Really had no idea what personal space was. Naruto lurched back as Sasuke weaved through the thick air towards him, leaving him little space and time to formulate a proper punch or kick. As he stumbled backwards, he lost track of distance and found a fist curled in his collar and a counter digging deep into his spine. His back arched unpleasantly, and almost instantly the vague feeling of warmth settled in, followed by pins and needles. More startling than the oncoming pain, however, was the way Sasuke's right thumb was slowly tracing the collar of his white linen school shirt.

When Naruto looked up from that hand to that pair of eyes, a realization dawned on him.

He wasn't as stupid as he looked. Playing dumb was always easier than acting smart. He was somewhere in that go-between, and choosing the latter just made his life easier. And it sounded funny to be called a dumb ass, as opposed to insulting when called a smart ass.

It was all in his own series of logics, and right now, his logic pointed to one thing.

Fighting wasn't enough anymore.

It wasn't enough?

One could get used to taking the hits, he supposed. You could train the body to remove pain from the conscious. Was this the new plan, then? Discomfort? Or was the raven just too lazy to throw a decent punch his way? Or was the threat of an able hand so close to his neck such a paralyzing threat that Sasuke assumed Naruto would be wary of it?

He wasn't wary. He wasn't even nervous. But he was very uncomfortable. But ignorance had to be called bliss for some reason..

"How'd you know I was coming?" was his genius question. It seemed to stump Sasuke for a moment, anyway. The taller boy frowned for a fraction of a moment, debating on whether or not to stay under the false pretense that Naruto was playing dumb or he honestly had shown up as a favor to his teacher. He pressed his fingers against his collarbone with the slightest application of pressure. Naruto didn't so much as blink. But when he shifted his thumb to rest on the skin of his throat, the blond couldn't rein in the tiniest flinch of his eyes.

Seemingly satisfied with this, Sasuke replied, "You would have found excuse sooner or later. And this is perfect one." Silence. "I'm moving," Sasuke hissed impatiently, seeing no spark of enlightenment cross his features. "I leave at end of the week."

_"Mr Uchiha is still attending school?"_

Suddenly, the words had gained a whole new meaning.

_School. School. Still attending school._

_I'm moving._

_Still attending school?_

_At end of the week._

Of course he was leaving, Naruto thought. It made perfect sense. Sasuke was too special to be at this school. Not special, per say, but different. Too restricted by the language barrier. Too dark, too quiet, too anti-social to even fit in with the misfits. He glared too often and was impassive even more. He showed emotion only when in a brawl, and even then so guarded he looked half-ready to run. He was too mature for his peers, and too mature for the teachers to properly handle. Too cocky, but with such a shadowed and jealous look he shot at other students one would wonder how thick his mask was.

And that one was only Naruto. How sad.

When Sasuke's forefinger found a gentle path from the hollow of his throat to his Adam's apple, Naruto shifted back a bit. Perturbed that whole charade had gone a notch above unacceptable, he said the first words that came to mind. "Good riddance." And watched as the hand slowly slipped down his chest to hang by the owners hip.

Sasuke stared at him with the first dumb expression ever to be witnessed on his noble face. Then it slid to disapproval, with a small trace of disappointment. Then understanding, and finally, the smug look that Naruto knew so well slid right back over his face like the pointer of a compass to North.

Like it belonged there. Another reason he hated the raven. As if he needed another.

And when the bastard started laughing. And when his knuckles started itching, so badly that as he clenched his fists he felt he could only bite at the flesh to tear out the sting or hit something.

He chose the reasonable of the two, and the feeling of hard bone cracking against his hand was a instantaneous satisfaction. Well worth the after-ache, and whatever punishment came his way.

The Uchiha had stumbled back several steps, and Naruto was pleased to see that he'd stop laughing. His head was bent, as he wiped the back of his hand against his lip, and then pulled it away to inspect the smear as if he'd never seen blood before. Blatant shock was mirrored in every one of his actions, and yet when he looked up, his gaze was settled and calm as he said, "You hit me."

"You deserved it. Don't laugh at me, retard. People are gonna think you're a psycho… Your mask'll slip, Uchiha."

"Mask," he echoed blankly. "Do I look like I wear a mask, Uzumaki?"

The automatic 'yes' caught in his throat as, upon closer inspection, Naruto noticed something slightly off in Sasuke's expression. He'd picked up his guardians annoying knack for pestering people to show true colors. That blending in was cowardice, and standing out was a birth-given liberty meant to be executed at every point in a person's life. That one exception stood in front of him now. A frightening mixture of misunderstanding and superiority twisted his features. His black eyes were slightly wider, and the way they were sat in his sallow face with its white complexion made him look demonically handsome, twisting his already harsh features and making them too perfect, better meant for a hand-drawn creature in a graphic novel or computer-generated villain from a movie.

The look on his face was like a maniac. A quiet maniac gently coaxing his victim backwards until they embedded their own selves on the knife propped up behind him.

Sasuke spit a glob of blood at the ground by Naruto's feet, and a sickening feeling told the shorter boy that that spot was the least of the blood stains that would ruin the carpet. And he was afraid of who would spill the most.

No. He was just afraid it would be him. Because it undoubtedly would be if he didn't get out. Now.

"You are safe in here."

A lie if Naruto had ever heard one. Sasuke stood five feet from him now, and he was slowly closing in with measured steps. Slowly, like a dancer, he treaded across the generic carpet, piercing eyes reminding Naruto that the exit was behind him, and Naruto would have to go through him to get to it.

"Safe from what?" he asked.

Sasuke had the nerve to roll his eyes, shake his head, and call him something undoubtedly insulting in Japanese before demanding, "Stop hiding."

"I'm not _hiding_ Don't know what you think I'm even hiding _from_."

"And stop lying," he added. And then, "I know why you are here."

"Yeah. To give your crazy ass your fucking homework, which you tore **up**, idiot face, and I am **not **taking the blame for that."

"I know you're not here for the homework. You've never done well in school anyway. Why care to deliver homework when you not even complete your own?"

Naruto, who'd inched himself forward a few inches, was no grappling along the counter, sliding sideways and eyeing the wall over Sasuke's shoulder. The door. He had to get to the order. Any other day he'd love good brawl, but only when there was a back door. Not here, not in his house. **His **house.

He had to get out.

Sasuke was losing his understanding look and raised a curious eyebrow, frowning slightly now in confusion. He didn't understand, but to be fair, neither did Naruto.

Clearing his throat, the blond forced out, "I think there's been a mistake."

"There has been no mistake," Sasuke hissed. "I know why y-"

"No, I really think you don't," Naruto cut in. "I don't have a clue what you think I'm doing here, but I'm just here as a favor. Iruka couldn't find anyone else, so he sent me, all right? You don't want the papers, I get it, fine. Could've just said so. I came, I delivered, I'm leaving." He took a deliberate step forward, but paused in the action of taking a second.

Anger.

Fuck, he'd never seen anyone look so angry before.

He hissed Japanese through gritted teeth, and it reminded Naruto strongly of a cobra's hiss he'd heard before while watching Animal Planet. Then the snake had struck the guy who'd been dangling him from his arm with bared fangs. And as entertaining as it was then, that certainly did not apply now. Hs feet spread apart slightly, ready for a fight if need be, Naruto asked, "What did you think I was here for, huh?" He had a hunch, but it was so far out of the realm of sanity he couldn't dare voice it without either cracking up or getting a wicked punch to the gut.

But that look Sasuke was giving him…

The raven narrowed his eyes to slits of thin obsidian. "Do you think this all funny?" he growled. "You think it joke?" Naruto couldn't even find his English funny anymore. Now, for the first time in a very long many years, Naruto was starting to feel the slightest bit afraid.

"Well, you're obviously not laughing," Naruto breathed. He then attempted a sneer, but it came more of a spastic twitch before his lips fell flat again.

There was a long, quiet silence in which neither of them spoke. Sasuke was breathing slightly heavily as if he'd done a few rounds around the apartment, and Naruto could hardly breath at all. What had Sasuke wanted? What had he expected?

What did he want now?

Naruto didn't know what Sasuke said next. It was a lowly-spoken hiss of Japanese, a short sentence the blond didn't have the time to pick apart, couldn't guess its contents from his rival's face, before Sasuke attacked.

When Naruto went into a home other than his own, the first thing that struck him was the smell. It was the smell of that person, only many times more potent, and surrounding him in a thick current. That particular, distinctive scent of all those people combined with all of their possessions, their plants, their animals, the laundry detergent they used, the food they cooked, bundled into one that he'd get used after half an hour. But he couldn't smell his own home, smell his own scent, or taste his own taste. It was as part of him as his own flesh and bone.

Sasuke had drunk water after being passed out on the counter for who-knew-how long. Was this his real taste? Untainted by foreign substances? Because Naruto would swear on every grave of every person he'd lived long enough to watch die, on every grave he'd ever have to visit, that he would never in his life get used to that taste, that smell of the other's boys skin that was abruptly shoved under his nose.

Kissing Sasuke was like swallowing ash.

But it would have been a lie to call it a kiss. It was a pair of cool, chapped lips scraping clumsily along his, sharp canines biting in every now and then. It was a thin, slimy tongue slithering into his mouth and thrusting past his teeth, roaming where it pleased. It was a large hand pinching at the junctures of his jaw with bruising force. It was the blond crying out from the ascending pain of it, and disgust as his mouth was pried and kept open by greedy fingers. It was his fist that had escaped Sasuke's other hand that beat against the boy's chest, and when the raven pressed closer, it was Naruto pulling at his hair. It was Sasuke hissing in pain before pulling back, releasing Narutos jaw before capturing the other hand that was still buried in hair the blond had once marveled as so soft. It was large hands snaking around his wrists before the other pinched his jaw and continued his not-a-kiss. It was the raven with an air of trying to do something he'd seen so often, but couldn't quite pull off, so he tried harder.

The taste was heavy and disturbing. It wasn't unpleasant, but reminiscent of what Naruto imagined he'd taste if he licked under the grate of his fireplace, or the cinders left from collapsed coals. The pleasant, woodsy smell they gave off. He tasted like that.

Naruto never wanted to see another fire in his life.

The way his head was forced back made it hard to breathe, and his face went lax as his mind swayed to and fro, not processing the present, still stuck in the not-too-distant past when they were glaring, but had a reasonable distance between the two. His mind was stuck at a bump, the present waving itself tantalizingly over his conscious.

Sasuke slipped his tongue back into his own mouth, kissed Naruto's lower lip, then the top, and drew back. A faint gleam of triumph entered his eyes at the glazed look on the shorter boy's face.

"I knew it," he whispered, warm breath laving his captive's face. "I knew you felt the same." He released Naruto's face, curved his hand below the jaw, cupping it tenderly before leaning forward to plant a chaste kiss on the other's mouth. When Naruto didn't respond, Sasuke took it as in incentive to deepen it. Without hesitancy, he plunged inside once more, letting his eyes flutter shut, a deep rumble of approval growing at the back of his throat.

When his wrists were freed, when a hand nestled itself on his hip, Naruto snapped. And bit down, hard, tasting bitter copper ruining the flavor of ash. Like drinking orange juice after just brushing his teeth, it tasted vile and made him flinch, but he held on until Sasuke himself jerked back.

They found themselves in another standoff, now with a mere three feet of distance between their heaving bodies. Both with expressions of pure shock. Of violence, of betrayal.

And that, Naruto thought, crosses the line.

"What," he whispered slowly, "is wrong with you?" It was a serious question, deserving of a serious answer. He didn't understand, and half of him didn't want to. This was insane. Sasuke wasn't serious. There was something wrong with his head. His brain was fucked up in one or two ways and that was why…

His lips began to tingle and his jaw began to ache as Sasuke slowly spoke. "I thought…"

When he didn't finish, Naruto finished for him, "Whatever you thought was wrong, okay? I don't--I mean-- Dude, c'mon, I don't… _swing _that way, all right? Don't know where you got the wrong impression but I'll set it clear for you, okay? Right now?"

Sasuke didn't seem to be listening. He was murmuring something under his breath. The blond distinctly heard the words 'lead me on' thrown into the mix, and couldn't help himself from shouting, "Lead you _on_? What in the flying fuck gave you that idea, dickface? I've done nothing to you! Nothing with you, hell, we fight, idiot! We don't… don't kiss or shit like that! We don't fucking _flirt_, for God's sake! I'm not gay, all right?"

"This entire year…" His voice was distant, shallow, unbearably heart-breaking. Somehow, in the matter of less than a minute, Naruto Uzumaki had gone from victim to villain. This didn't set well with him, and sank heavily to the bottom of his gut. "This whole year…"

"What did you think it was?" Naruto asked hoarsely. "Violent foreplay? Gimmie a break! Look, I don't even like you, so just…"

Like a two-ton hammer, a fist collided with his stomach and he found himself doubled over as pain clutched him in a terrifyingly lethal grasp, breath choked from his lungs one gasp at a time. It was the hardest Sasuke had ever hit him, and Naruto realized with a reluctant realization that the raven had always been holding back on his behalf. Sasuke watched as he hobbled backwards, sifting his weight to rest on the counter as he clutched his aching abdomen. Glassy black eyes met his with an eerie, angry calm, waiting for the blond to catch his breath. When the blond finally did, and straightened his posture, readying his body for another attack, Sasuke took the final step in closing the distance between them, locking their bodies into a tight fit. His arms trapped Naruto's by his sides and he leaned forward so that the tips of their noses touched. Sasuke's skin was too warm, the blond noticed, and a pink hue outlined the root of his hair. Maybe the boy was sick. Hopefully, Naruto prayed, he was sick, sick, sick.

"You. Lead. Me. On," Sasuke stated slowly, annunciating each word with perfect clarity to as Naruto could understand perfectly, although he didn't understand at all. Not one bit.

"No. I. Didn't," he bit out.

"What is it you wanted from me, then?" Sasuke asked. "A friend?" He emphasized the word in disgust, as if the very idea of it repulsed him. "A rival? I can be that, if you like. I always be there to beat you," he said this so matter-of-factly that it made the nausea in Naruto's stomach boil unpleasantly. "I always be here." His warm, cindery breath fanned across Naruto's mouth, and he had to stop what he knew would come soon. "I be what you want if you be what I want, ne?"

"That's the problem, bastard," Naruto retorted. "I don't want anything from you. Not a single damn thing. Now let me the Hell go."

Sasuke snorted. "Wrong again, dumbfuck."

His hand snaked up and snapped a fistful of golden spikes, and Naruto hissed as his head was yanked back. A strong arm instantly circled behind his back, pinioning both arms to the blond's sides.

His skin erupted into goosebumps as the Uchiha blew a gentle breath across his collarbone. "Wrong, Uzumaki. Everybody wants something." Naruto felt a warm, slightly damp pair of lips press tightly into his skin.

"Everyone wants something," he repeated, mostly to himself it sounded. "It's only fair that one of us gets what we want. And since you apparently want nothing…"

Finally comprehending the whispered words, Naruto snarled, "Wait a minute, you asshole! Don't you--What the Hell do you think you're doing!?"

The blonde watched Sasuke's dark head of hair bob up and down, side-to-side, as harsh lips viciously attacked his neck, along with a pair of sharp incisors and a hot, wet tongue. He started on the right side, licking and biting his way from the lobe down to his collarbone. "Sasuke, stop!" He sucked small bits of skin before clamping down with harsh bites, pushing against the bruised skin with his rough tongue, lapping warm trails over flesh. His body also began to move to a suffocating close proximity. "Knock the fuck off, get the hell off of me!" He pulled at Naruto's waist until the boy fumbled, his lower back now balanced as his feet struck out to keep himself from falling. Sasuke's body pressed him down tightly, legs tucked snugly between the blonds to prevent any kicking. "Let me go!"

"Bastard," Naruto hissed. "I don't want anything, but I definitely do not want this!"

"You shouldn't have lead me on, then," Sasuke returned before opening his mouth wider to leave a large bite mark on the column of Naruto's neck. The blond bit back a startled response, biting his abused lip and try to lean further back. Sasuke's lips latched onto his neck and followed his body's movements.

"The kids at school are right," Sasuke finally declared, face still hidden, but venom lacing his voice. "This your fault, you know. You shouldn't let it this far. All your fault," and a short string of Japanese syllables. And then, hissed do low Naruto had to strain his ears to hear it, "You truly are a monster."

Stunned into silence, Naruto slumped against the edge of the counter. And as Sasuke tilted his head to the right for easier access, Naruto began to wonder at the irony of it. It wasn't just his heritage and apparent nonchalance to the world around him that made Sasuke different. It was the way he looked at Naruto. That bitter hatred, that arrogance over having beaten him, the pain when the blonde landed a punch, the reluctant approval on the rare occasion Naruto came out on top. It was acceptance, almost. Acknowledgement.

To find someone who acknowledged him outside of family, outside of a person who was forced to sleep under the same roof as he, was something the blond had always wanted. It was in a different form, but always what he wanted.

_'Everyone wants something.'_

But why realize it now, he wondered. More importantly, was this kind of want that same acknowledgement? Sick, twisted, perverted, but it was a want all the same. Sasuke wanted Naruto.

Naruto wanted something different. This he did not want. And when he felt struggling fingers beginning to pick at the first button of his shirt, he rammed his chin down onto the Uchiha's head. The motion cause ringlets of pain to spiral through his jaw, but nonetheless got the desired grunt of pain.

"Stop it," the Uchiha murmured, as if to a five-year-old tugging on his shirt sleeve. But he abandoned Naruto's neck in favor of giving the shirt more attention, managing to slide the first button through its hole and worked on the second, gaining speed quickly as his hand trailed down. Naruto's captive hands curled into tight fists, wrenching this way and that, Sasuke's hand allowing minimal motion. Words choked and died before they could leave Naruto's mouth. What did he say in such a situation. To stop it, like a little girl. To curse him off, like the small child he felt like. The raven towered over him like an adult, a teacher, who was doing what he thought was right.

Sasuke finished the last button, and wasted no time in bringing both Naruto's hands behind his back, lacing strong fingers around them before whipping his shirt down and off his shoulders. The blond's face was pressed against a pale neck, warm and slightly sticky with anticipatory sweat, while the Uchiha worked to bind his wrists with the crisp white cloth. He struggled to open his aching jaw, and when he could, bit harshly. Sasuke hissed, but otherwise didn't halt in his ministrations. When finished, he yanked his head back, glaring slightly before smirking a triumphant sneer. Cerulean eyes stared back up.

"Do you even know what you're doing?" Naruto snapped.

"I know what I'm doing to do," Sasuke sneered in return before looping his index finger through the belt loop of his school trousers and pulling back, slowly and firmly, causing Naruto's feet to slide across the floor. His socks offered little help as the balls of his feet grappled to find purchase on the carpet.

"You fucker, watch it! I'm fall--"

_Crack_

Naruto groaned heavily, dots marring his vision, head pounding from where it had cracked against the wooden paneling of the countertop. He slumped against it, neck crooked, arms twisted painfully behind him. His fingers were starting to numb, and he briefly wondered if there'd be welts. He also wondered how the carpet had went from blue to neon purple, and how there were so many lights on the ceiling when the room was so dank with dying light as the afternoon passed them by. He wondered when Iruka would start to become concerned. He wondered if the police would get involved, or already were. He wondered how long he'd been here. An hour, or two, or a week? He wondered when, if, Sasuke would decide to let him go. And he wondered how far Sasuke was going to take this.

He lay there, dizzy with overbearing exhaustion and frustration. Sasuke was fumbling with something in the kitchen, but he couldn't tell what. Opening drawers, opening cabinets, opening something that made hinges squeak. He allowed himself to slump down further, his white undershirt riding up slightly. His pants buckle felt too loose, like he'd lost twenty pounds since that morning, and his toes felt sweaty in their shoes.

A pair of bare feet came into view. He trailed his eyes. Sasuke was, if possible, even skinner than he'd looked before. His chest was broad, but feeble looking. His hips were narrow, his waist slim, and pale skin still undaunted by black wiry hairs. The naked shoulders, bony and white, met with a neck, and atop that a highly-strung head with a smug-looking expression on its face.

He approached slowly. It was then that Naruto saw what was in his hands. One was odd; a bottle of what looked like extra virgin olive oil, golden in its intricate glass bottle. The other was terrifying; a gleaming, sharp steak knife, hardly the length of his hand but with enough point to make up for its diminutive size.

That's it, Naruto thought. That's it. He's fucking insane.

When the blond told him so, loudly and angrily, Sasuke just sunk to his knees before him, one leg between Naruto's spread ones. He placed the mysterious bottle to the side, and to Naruto's dread kept the knife.

"You crazy bastard," Naruto whispered. His throat hurt too much to keep on yelling. "The fuck do you think you're doing? This is illegal, you motherfucking dip shit, _illegal_/ They're going to rag your pasty little ass behind bars and I'm going to laugh you sick fuck and--"

"It fine to talk," Sasuke interceded gently, not an ounce of hurt appearing in his fierce eyes. "Words," he scoffed. "They all you have, now." Then he raised the knife to level with wide blue eyes, keeping it there for a long moment for affect, before gently tapping it against an unblemished cheek. Naruto flinched. He dragged it down lightly, with just enough pressure to pose as a threat, but not enough to leave a mark. The blond held deathly still. He slowly slid it down Naruto's threat, and the small boy held his breath until it had cleared his collar. He felt the cold top of it slip over his shoulder until it was removed. The Uchiha's hand lifted to grab hold of one of his wife beater's straps, slid the knife under it, and jerked it upwards, splitting the fabric cleanly in two.

Naruto watched helplessly as Sasuke repeated the motion with the other sleeve, and then brought the knife point back to the center of his chest. Sasuke lifted the shirt slightly to slice a neat notch in it before putting the knife aside. He grabbed a side of shirt in each hand and in one deft motion, ripped the shirt clear off him.

Naruto was too busy watching the knife to pay attention to Sasuke's face. As soon as he'd placed the weapon aside, beside the bottle of oil, the other hand was grasping his face again, fingers digging into his cheeks and finding the spots along the jaw that had already been worked into painful tenderness. Naruto cried out quietly before warm lips smothered his again.

It was more of a kiss this time than an assault. Sasuke took time to alternately press his lips against Naruto's slightly open ones, to lightly flick his tongue out to taste him. He smoothly ran his mouth over his captives, shifting his body to a better angle. He gripped Naruto's hip, thumb hooking through the belt loop and tugging him down until he lay flat on his back. Sasuke followed, never detaching his lips from Naruto's, continuing to let his tongue grow bolder until the kiss grew just as vicious as before.

When Sasuke did draw away, he did so reluctantly. He feebly bit down on Naruto's lower lip before he looked him in the eye.

Naruto waited a moment to recapture his breath before spitting in his face.

Sasuke took the time to wipe it off with his thumb before backhanding him with just as much force as the punch to the gut earlier. When the raven leaned back down for another stolen kiss, he rearranged his body to fit it better along Naruto's.

It could not have lasted more than three minutes, but it seemed to stretch much longer than that. The blond's shoulder blades and arms burned, but he could hardly feel them anymore. He found his peak before Sasuke, crashing himself upwards one last time before collapsing. The boy continued to move as if possessed for ten more grueling seconds, in which the horrifying realization of what he'd just participated in came crawling back, bruising both their bodies, before he grunted and dropped downwards, suffocating Naruto with his weight.

It wasn't white. It wasn't blinding. His climax didn't bring the that bright light his previous attempts at masturbation had brought him. This one was shared, and demented somehow. Tainted, dirty with sin, but intoxicatingly pleasurable. It was almost… the color blinding his sight, the color he saw when he closed his eyes was…

Sasuke shifted above him. His arms felt bruised and stretched, and his shoulders were sore with rug burn. He knew that by now his neck must look like a plum and the bastard was gonna pay for it, this had to be all sorts of illegal, this was disgusting and disturbing and had felt too good for it to have been right.

Sasuke was sitting back down, sitting on his haunches to survey the damage below him. With one hand he absently ran his palm over Naruto's stomach, not yet completely flat, still shiny with perspiration.

"You really should lose this weight," he murmured. "You still are a child, aren't you?"

"'m fourteen," Naruto ground out, too tired to reply with a proper comeback. "That's not a child."

"Close enough." Sasuke seemed to pause. "I'm sixteen."

Naruto just glared up at him, unfazed by this new piece of information. It wasn't that much of a shock; they guy looked way too old to be stuck with their class, anyway.

"I was held back few years when I came to America," Sasuke informed him.

"I have bad breath in the morning," Naruto replied sarcastically, "since it's apparently show and tell time."

Sasuke ignored the snipe. "Don't you want know why I came here?"

Yes. "No." Naruto shifted, trying to find a place to rest against where his arms wouldn't hurt. "I want to know when you go back."

"I'm not," Sasuke said coolly. "This was temporary home."

"Do I care?"

"Do you?"

"No." Naruto sighed, ignoring the slightly pained look on his rival's face. "Look, I won't tell anyone what you did today, okay? We can just let it drop and forget about it. You can go off to some fancy city that'll tend to every one of your pissy gay needs and I'll rot away here in peace. Deal?"

"I've never done anything like this before," Sasuke admitted slowly, as if Naruto had asked. He pressed his other hand to the boy's chest when he began to prop himself on his elbows, gently pushing him back down. "I always wanted my first time to be with you," he continued, as if nothing had happened. "It's shitty… cliché… but true."

"Yeah, well, you want too much."

Naruto had to had bipolarity to the growing list of trends he'd picked up in Sasuke's warped personality. His hands went from gentle, soothing motions to gripping tightly at one bruised hip and the conjunction between his neck and shoulder.

"You think you are free of that accusation, you do?" Sasuke murmured, eyes like black ice. "'Stop Sasuke,' 'Get off Sasuke,' 'Let me go Sasuke,'" he whispered. "You want too much. You expect patience while you make up your mind. You expect everything you want from me while I receive nothing."

"There's nothing to make my mind up about!" Naruto cut in, alarmed. "I told you I didn't want it and you didn't lis--"

Sasuke cut him off again. "Your body, your heart, are completely different. And it isn't fair to not give me both." He narrowed his eyes. "It all or nothing, dobe. Which?"

"N--ahh!" He thrashed his head, no longer sure of the answer himself. His mind felt clouded by the building sexual tension, by the desire to feel more, from another boy nonetheless, to get more, to have more, to take whatever Sasuke would let him have, to take more than he could handle.

"Very well."

Whatever Sasuke thought he'd just gotten permission for, he was very much mistaken. He swung his foot up and jerked it forward, into the other boys chest. He heard a slight wheeze as the wind was knocking from the raven's lungs, but he lurched back only an inch or two before capturing the blond's ankle and pushing it forward. Naruto felt his knee lock as he struggled not to be pushed all the way back. The position was too awkward for him to struggle back and he bit at the gag binding his mouth in frustration. His eyes felt hot and watery, his throat like stretched rubber. A gurgling erupted from his mouth and game out as a muffled, undignified whimper. He shifted on his painful arms, but the position he was forced into left one knee almost to his chest and the other hooked around Sasuke's hip, held there by another hand. He glared the best he could, and slowly, that hand began to move.

"Please!" he tried to shout through the cloth, but it came out as a low-sounding, "Aaaiee!" The sound was so feeble he doubted Sasuke had heard it. Even if the older teen did, however, he made no move to stop his ministrations. All the while he stared into wide cerulean eyes with his lusting ones, watching as they finally began to brim over, searching for any sigh of enjoyment, any trace of acceptance. All he found was fear.

Because Naruto was finally starting to feel it. The realization of hopelessness, and the fact that right now, Sasuke could, and would, do whatever he wanted with him. For once, the blond wouldn't get a say.

It was frightening, bone-chilling and frustrating. He had that familiar sensation when he was in a nightmare, where no matter the circumstance it felt like he was being torn from his life. Torn from his dreams and aspirations, from Iruka, from his family, that everything would change and he'd never see any of it again. The feeling where he knew it was a dream, but couldn't find it in himself to find a way out.

Now was no different.

His vision was badly blurred and his lips trembled with the effort to keep from sobbing. He couldn't stop the tears now, and the dripped freely down his cheeks. Sasuke didn't seem to mind. In fact, he seemed delighted to an extent. With a small smile on his lips, he drew his hand up to cup Naruto's cheek.

"It's all right to cry," Sasuke assured him. "It is greatest honor to have someone cry for you."

_I'm not crying for you!_ Naruto thought frantically. _I'm crying _because _of you, you idiot! You're scaring me! You got what you wanted, I'm terrified! You scare me shitless! You're done, I'm scared enough!_

_I'm terrified._

--

Sasuke sighed heavily, his hips slowing shifting, and then he fell quiet and still, collapsing on top of Naruto. Their twin sets of heavy breathing were uneven and loud, now the only sound in the room. The sun had finally set, and the walls were masked with dirty orange. The windows were open, and a chill racked Naruto's body. But he kept on trembling, and could no longer blame it on the cold.

There was a pause, as if Sasuke were uncertain of what to do with himself, before he collapsed to Naruto's right side. The blond's head had been laying to angle towards his left, and with the way his neck ached, he knew it would be only beneficial for it to move a bit. But it was too painful now.

And he knew, just knew, if he saw any trace of bliss, any pleasant expression, on Sasuke's face, he would break.

The raven was untying his hands now, with what felt like only one hand. Their frantic movements from before has lessened his restraints, and Naruto probably could have released himself without too much effort if he wanted. For now, he was content to let the other boy do it. When his arms slid to the ground, he wondered f they'd roll right off; white hot pins and needles digging and scraping his joints. They were too giant, long bruises, held on by ligaments that felt like they housed hot magma. It was altogether too painful, altogether soul crushing.

Then Sasuke undid the gag. At first it choked him further as he pulled, but then it slumped like a dead snake to the floor, stretched and damp. It was Sasuke's shirt, Naruto realized, before he took a deep gasp of air like he'd been denied it for days. At first he choked, like he swallowed too big a lump of food or a drink had gone down the wrong pipe, and the exhale was shaky. His next breath he choked on as well, several times, and it came out in a low, whistling gasp. He choked and gagged on the air like it was toxic, and his lungs felt swollen, deprived of oxygen, he'd run a million mile race and a bag had been tied over his face and he couldn't get enough _air._

Naruto didn't realize the choking on air was actually a series of wrenching sobs until he felt a warm, rough hand begin to trace soft circles over his shoulder blades. That made him cry harder. He tried to move away, to shrivel away, but the mere motion sent bolts of pain racing up his spine like lightning, causing his whole body to burn. He felt broken already, physically broken, he could smell the blood and feel it drying on his thighs with Sasuke's semen. That blood came from somewhere, and he knew it wasn't from the older boy.

But when Sasuke shifted to wrap an arm around his waist, and a body spooned him from behind, he felt entrenched in ice despite the rigid warmth, the hot and sticky remains of sweat and blood. There was truly no air now and he cried harder than he'd ever cried in his life. It was like being born again, from something pure to some worthless, broken, filthy possession. Some dirty, tainted, disgusting vermin and what he wouldn't give to die.

The crying, the countless tears running down his sweaty cheeks, and the way his body shook didn't make him feel less a boy, less a man. No, he'd gone far beyond that. Sasuke's stripped him of everything now, including his humanity.

He didn't feel _human _anymore.

He didn't speak until he managed to finally calm himself down, and that in itself took longer than the actual act. Sasuke waited with baited patience, every now and then run a hand over his hip or his chest, or run fingers through his knotted hair. He felt lips latch onto the skin at the back of his neck, on his shoulders, the shell of his ear, the curve of his jaw. Half of him found it natural, the gentle caresses smoothing out the broken pieces of him after such a harsh and violent act. It was the smooth sandpaper after the iron file had shaved him down to his core, a cooling salve placed around his pounding heart. The other half, he figured, anyone would have felt.

Every pore was _bleeding_. Every breath brought him closer and closer to vomiting, adding to the mess on his skin already. That half was crying and crying, getting louder and louder with each past second. It was like the rape was the eye of the storm. Once it had blown over, now Naruto had was himself to face. And what a self it was.

_Bleeding._

He'd never felt this way before, and knew he never would. How could a life ever grow this dark? How could he ever get clean? Would his and Sasuke's essence ever wash out of his skin? Would that soul-eating pain working its way from the bottom up ever ease up? Would his eyes ever stop burning, would his throat ever stop turning itself out as he choked down waves of nausea? Would the bruises fade, or would they remain yellow smears on his skin forever? Would he ever be able to shower, to bathe, without resisting the urge to scratch off every follicle of skin? Would he ever be able to kiss someone without wondering when the fire would turn saliva to grisly ash?

And would those dark eyes ever fade from his memory?

He'd stopped crying now and lay quite still. So did Sasuke. So quiet, so still, suspended in time as they were the blond had to wonder when it was that he'd fallen asleep. Or, more correctly, he began to doze. His eyelids fluttered like shutters in the midst of a heavy storm, and his heart went from too fast to too slow. He wasn't aware of whether his breathing was louder than the others or now, but it didn't feel right. Like this was another world his lungs had yet to adapt to the air of. There was a distinct barrier, now, between him and the rest of the world he'd left barely an hour before. Already he felt different.

_He wasn't human._

Sasuke was murmuring something again, he realized belatedly. He thought of turning his head a bit to hear better, but decided that it was too much effort. He wondered if Sasuke had changed, too. If he would look at his reflection into those eyes like black ice and see something different than the image that had stared at him in the mirror that morning. His insides had rearranged, and his heart had, metaphorically, stopped beating. It had yet to restart.

And he didn't want to see Sasuke. Not now, not ever. He wanted to turn around and see thin air. He wanted to wait a few minutes before dragging on his clothes to stumble out the door and act like the luckiest survivor of an act of gang violence. Although he might have fared better with a gang. The gang could only rearrange his face, not his whole existence, like one sixteen-year-old with only a loose grasp on the English language could.

"_Naruto,_" Sasuke was saying, his tongue slipping the 'r' into an 'l'. "Naruto. Naruto…? Naruto!"

Stop. _Stop saying my name_.

"Are you listening me?:

_I wish I were able not to_. What did he want? What more could he want?

_How much more can you break me before you're satisfied?_

"Are you all right?"

He'd never felt less all right in his entire life.

Sasuke was shifting again, and hands returned to his body. He was too exhausted to suppress the flinch that shook his whole body. The dark-haired youth didn't seem to mind. Grasping one shoulder and one hip, he drew Naruto to lay on the side, where he paused at the sharp gasp of pain. Then he was gently coaxed to lay on his back where he lay panting, eyes squinting but no longer closed. Sasuke was one of the last things he needed to see, but even worse than that was the dark. He didn't want to be closed in by darkness now, not when he was surrounded by so many blind spots, as vulnerable to attack as he was right now.

He saw the older boy's outline first, a halo of glowing light separating him from the rest of the world, the rest of this frightening world Naruto had stumbled into by accident. Then he saw those eyes, thick ribbons of concern reeling in them like an old film strip and contradicting everything he'd done up until this point. And although he couldn't see his reflection in those eyes, he did see the way Sasuke looked at him. It was like he was a toy; a toy he'd just purchased, only to break it after the first afternoon of play, and was now determined to fix it before his parents came home to find it broken n pieces upon their floor.

"Do-I-," some muttered Japanese, "I didn't meant--I didn't want--to-- that to you…" He stuttered and stumbled, forgetting his lines, seemingly trying to convey with his eyes what his mouth had obvious problems with. "I… don't know what was over me…."

Naruto couldn't say anything, or move his mouth into a frown or a grimace. He doubted if he could even cry anymore. His tear ducts must have been dry and barren by now, all their hard labor drying in salty tracks across his face. He couldn't help but think, in his numb state, where his voice had gone to. He longed to rip into the boy above him with every single insult in his living memory, and then some. He wanted to ask, to demand, how Sasuke could thing an "I didn't mean to" could solve a single thing.

Sasuke's thumb stroked over the edge of his eye, and then ran through his hair tenderly. His face begin to waver less, and he could see a fierce look in those eyes. Naruto could recognize anger in the blink of an eye, but found himself dumbfounded under that stare, unable to identify even a single emotion that was reigning through his companion, that made him look like he had a dozen swords stuck in his back and digging deeper every second.

"Do… you need anything?" he was asking softly. "I--" He faltered, leaning back, then leaned forward, and then back an inch or two. His pale, bony shoulders still shimmered with sweat. "I'll go get you something… Do you need lie down? You can go my bed, or--or--you can lea--" the last word stuck in his mouth and went unfinished. "How about a drink? I can get you a drink, if you wish."

The 'r' sound was slurred and sounded more like "dlink". Sasuke would get him a drink and then he'd corner him and tear him in half because there was something in the drink, something in the air, than was reminiscent of poison but thousands of times more lethal. It was utter power versus cowering weakness, it was smug superiority versus strong inferiority, it was the dark versus the light and he'd had to concede that the dark could exist with no light while feet were forever implanted in shadow. It was good versus evil where both sides were playing the other up to be the villain. Naruto had made a mistake. He shouldn't have left his bed, he shouldn't have agreed to do the errand, he shouldn't have accepted that drink that made one thing lead to another after another after another until all those anothers had him dying and bleeding on a floor that wasn't his.

Die, die, die, let him die, don't let him die, he's only human, he isn't human, he can't be human now, but then what does that make me, both of us monsters, death is such an ugly word, even for beasts like us, but stillstillstill, _I don't want to see his face anymore!_

_**"GET AWAY FROM ME!"**_

__He'd found his voice. It was like the long half hour in which he'd been gagged had been a mere few seconds, and that he was starting off from where he was so rudely interrupted. Now he could shout, scream, tear at him and tear him up until he could feel even a fraction of the pain Naruto felt.

Sasuke vaulted back onto his ankles when Naruto towered over him, those two inches of added height making all the difference. Then a half uttered cry as the blond was immobilized by a brief flash of fire burning up his spine, and then they were at eye level. Naruto's eyes darted down and he saw a smear of blood on the older boy's pelvis before he forced his eyes back up. He couldn't look at it, he wouldn't.

"Get away!" he tried shouting again when Sasuke didn't budge any further. "Go--get out of here!"

"I can't," Sasuke whispered, vague shock marring his white face. "This mine apartment…"

Naruto gritted his teeth, blue eyes flashing brightly, feeling so hot he wondered if even his pupils had turned red. "Fine!" he snapped. "Fine!" He leaned forward, now expecting the sharp pain and ignoring it. "I'll leave, then!"

But before he could get much farther, Sasuke had grabbed him by the forearm and was forcing him back down. "Wait!" he urged. "Please, just wait! You're hurt. Lay there while, let me get you ice or--or something, but please, just _wait_!"

"No! Let me GO!" He thrashed, and fingers gripped icily into the already bruised flesh of his wrists.

"Just let me explain, then! You can… you can go, all right? Let me explain first, then you go."

"No! No, no, NO! I'm not listening to ANYTHING you have to fucking SAY! I'm leaving and I'm getting your ass hauled into fuckin' prison! You… you _forced _me and I don't know about that harebrain place you grew up in but over here it's ILLEGAL!"

Sasuke's face was quickly falling with every word, but now it brought itself back up into a twisted sneer. Like the flip of a coin, Sasuke had done a one-eighty. Naruto knew, in that moment, that Sasuke had not had a single intention on letting him go. That if he'd stayed, like the raven had asked, he wouldn't have been able to leave later. It would have boiled down to this, all to this, and it was better to skip the formalities and dive straight into the point.

"Like you go to anyone," Sasuke snorted. Naruto gasped as he was forced back down, and winced when his knees buckled unpleasantly beneath him. Both of his wrists were caught now and despite his frantic pushes, they were forced to the floor on either side of his head. "What are you, Uzumaki? A girl? Run and scream rape to authorities, hoping some will protect you? I may not know you as well as I thought I did, but I know you well enough. I know you not enough of a cowardice to run screaming and crying. Although…" Smirking, Sasuke, drew both hands up until he could grasp them single-handedly, and used his free hand to lightly slap Naruto's cheek twice. "Looks like you already cried yourself out."

"Shut up!" Naruto hissed, his cheeks stinging with the sudden blush that ran from his hair line to his ears. "Just--"

"Eh, what's wrong?" Sasuke asked, sarcasm dripping from his words. "Going to cry more on me?"

"Shut up, _shut the fuck up! _Get _off _of me, now! I said get--"

"It hurt, then, didn't it?" Sasuke asked smugly. "It's a lot bigger than yours, isn't it?"

"Stop it," was the embarrassingly low reply he managed. He couldn't think of anything else right now. It was like he was in the middle of having his whole mindset renovated and they'd only just threw his old personality out. "Stop, please, you've done enough…."

Sasuke continued to move, and then there were hands, hands everywhere. They crawled up his sides before running over his chest. Two sets of forefinger and thumb found dusty nipples and pinched, twisting until Naruto was forced to cry out.

"I'm sorry," Sasuke was saying, letting his mouth draw wet, slick lines from his neck to his heart. "I didn't mean those things." Sharp teeth stopped to nick at his left nipple, and the blond whimpered when a rough, wet tongue lapped at the pebbled skin while the calloused pad of his thumb smoothed and flicked the other one, the other fingers gently running nails continuously over tan skin.

At a loss of what to do, how to struggle, Naruto gripped at the broad shoulders, pushing gently, but not making a sound. Sasuke simply captured the hands again and then moved them to his head, forcing smallish fingers to bury themselves in ebony hair. Sasuke's mouth detached from his skin to whisper, "That felt so nice, earlier. When you ran through my hair." He laid a gentle kiss to the skin he'd just ravished. "My mother did that, when I was young." Eyes as dark as his hair shut gently and a small smile cracked through. "Feels so nice."

The carpet beneath his body had gone wet, soggy, and Naruto thought he was truly drowning. Some feared that being buried alive was the worst death one could ever be faced with. Some feared fire, others of dying alone. Naruto feared drowning. To have the frustration of seeing the surface, his salvation, hang unmoving and so real above his head and to be trapped by something as weak, as intangible as water. To sink and to never resurface.

He was too afraid, he realized, and that there was a cliff he'd fallen off some time ago he couldn't climb his way up from. He was too scared, too petrified stiff to so much as move, to scream, to protest, to push. He wanted sleep, yes. Now a darkness would be a blessing, a gift he'd never asked for but was so pleasantly surprised to find. He wanted to sleep, to let his mind repair itself, to fall into bed, alone, by himself with no watchful eyes, and to sleep until all the bad things were gone. To have a dreamless slumber, to sleep, sleep, sleep it all away. The air was a dark burgundy, like dried blood, night time so close. When it came, he knew, he would sleep. He would sleep until he didn't know who he was and he'd wake up a new person. Just wait until night. Everything, everything would be all right again.

Sasuke's foreign cursing brought him back to reality, and he realized that the floor was, indeed, wet. He could feel his hair sticking to his neck and the back of his head, and the smell told him it was the extra virgin olive oil again. For the first time in a long few minutes, he uttered a long, throaty groan. He wondered how his body could react to the meaning behind this, to the fear, when his mind was so far from caring. His heart no longer seemed interested in his well-being.

_"Your body, your heart, are completely different. And it isn't fair to not give me both."_

_You can't have both_, the smaller, fiercer part of Naruto's brain snarled, like a box with its foot caught in a bear trip, _you have my body, you son-of-a-bitch. It's all yours. But you can't have me. I'm not yours. __**I'm not yours!**_

___"And it isn't fair to not give me both."_

_You'll never get my heart._

"It all right," Sasuke was murmuring half-heartedly, distracted as he fumbled behind Naruto's head. "I forgot last time. It will make it much easier." Done with whatever he was doing, Sasuke drew his hand back, and his partner noticed that it was coated in a sheet of thin, clear gold. "You'll like this," Sasuke promised. "Much easier. You'll like this."

Naruto groaned when the fingers were removed completely. He heard the familiar _schlip _sound that had warned him the time before, and he shut his eyes, waiting for it. The head in his hands was drawing up, the pain would come momentarily, and maybe Sasuke would sleep afterwards this time and he could get away…

He didn't expect to be kissed.

His eyes flew open, but Sasuke's were closed, and feeling awkward, he shut his, too. The movement of lips over his was slow and deliberate, like the other wanted to memorize the shape and feel of them. Like the rough end of silk they slid over his, slightly wet, mostly warm. Naruto's lower lip was captured for a brief moment, a set of teeth seizing it in a gentle nip before a smooth tongue soothed over it before slipping into his mouth. Naruto could detect the faint taste of salt and knew it was himself he was tasting along with the ash and cinnamon. The way the tongue melded over his, ran over the roof of his mouth, lined up along his teeth, was gentle, almost passionate, and slow. The raven didn't want to scare him, Naruto realized with bitter humor. He didn't want him to be frightened anymore. The fear began to ebb away, though, as the kiss grew longer, but stayed at the same pace. It dissolved away into reluctant resignation, into acceptance for something he knew he'd have to put up with for now but could forget all about later.

Sasuke's tongue slipped from his mouth, and a gentle, chaste kiss was placed at the corner of his mouth. Naruto opened his eyes to meet hopeful black ones. Two hands drew up and, as if my magic, his hands were released, and then held tenderly in rougher, larger ones. The pad of Sasuke's thumb ran circles over the back of his hand.

"Well?" Sasuke asked.

"Well what?" Naruto grunted, truly beyond caring of what he was asking. The white, dizzying almost-pleasure had dissipated to be replaced by anticipatory dread, his body waiting for what it knew would come, perhaps more painful than the first time.

"Are you…" He bit his lip uncharacteristically. "Will you… Can you…."

"Can I what?" Naruto whispered hoarsely, but Sasuke just shook his head, looking down forlornly with those unfamiliar eyes, carrying an expression so familiar but so mysterious, and Naruto just couldn't name it.

Naruto winced, but the pain didn't come. He squinted his eyes open a fraction, and black eyes consumed his entire world. A cool nose brushed alongside his and the pale face with, what Naruto now noticed, a widow's peek, dipping down and pointing to the space between his eyebrows.

Sasuke shook his head and kissed him, long and slow, no tongue but with lips like chapped velvet. Garnering no response, he pulled back with sad eyes, shaking his head.

"Mine," Sasuke whispered, the word ghosting over Naruto's mouth.

"AHH!" He cut his own cry short by biting into his lower lip, face contorting in pain. The sound that wrenched itself from between his lips was embarrassingly loud, too shattering in such a quiet room. Above him Sasuke growled, the sound a gentle yet strong purr from the back of his throat. His eyes were squinted and teeth clenched, a pink hue on his face from exertion, pleasure marring every line of his face.

He was tense above Naruto, the muscles of his thighs and arms quivering with restraint. Naruto kept his own body tense, almost holding onto the pain, afraid to let it go, or feel the new sensation that was starting to settle in.

"Relax," Sasuke gritted out, "just relax. It feels good."

Naruto's mind responded with a resilient, "No!", but his body was too exhausted to be defiant any longer. His muscles began to unclench, and with the tension left the pain until both were merely backdrops, hidden out of sight. The foreign pain become just one sharp shard instead of a sea of broken glass, tying him down to reality but causing him no harm. It was more than bearable, Naruto realized. It felt almost…

"Say my name," Sasuke gasped.

A rocking, rocking, rocky, head pulsing…

"Sa…"

"That's it," Sasuke encouraged. "Say it, please, say it… Say it for me…"

"Sa--"

"Say it for me."

"Sa--ahh! Sasukeee…"

"Say it louder."

"S-s-Sasuke…"

"Louder, Naruto. Say it louder."

"Sasuke!"

"_Louder._"

"_Sasuke!_"

"_Scream _my name for me."

"SASUKE!"

A groaning and rocking, rocking, darkness over-ruling his senses, mind-numbing pleasure threatening to crack his world.

"Mine," he growled. "All mine. Say it."

"Tell me you are mine," Sasuke ordered. "All mine. No one else's. Say it. Tell me it. Tell me you are mine."

"N-no…" Would be break? Naruto wondered. Would Sasuke break the moment Naruto left him? Would he be as irreparable as Naruto felt? Would he lose himself, forget his own name, forget everything that was _him_? Would he have trouble imaging a tomorrow morning? Would he forget that normal things existed? Would he be trapped forever in this crimson room with haunting memories, surrounded by the coppery scent of blood and musky smell of sex? Would he forget that the moon and the sun existed, as did night and day, that stars and clouds were figments of a child's imagination, and that all that existed was this dark twilight?

Sasuke was back to begging now, no longer forceful. "Say that you are mine," he pleaded, like it would be the only thing that could save his life. Perhaps it was. "_Please!_"

"I can't," his voice raspy, "I won't. I'm not." He spoke in fragments, coherency a thing of the past.

"Please," Sasuke tried again. "Say you're mine. You are. Say you're mine, no one else's, only mine."

"I'M NOT!" He finally withdrew his gaze from his captor's, looking to his left and towards the vertical line of the carpet, vision swimming in and out of focus.

"You are," Sasuke repeated, although his voice was unsure. "You have to be. I have nothing else--I must be allowed to have this. Just this, just you. Say you're mine."

"N-no… Nngh, Sasuke…"

"Naruto," Sasuke returned in kind. "Just say it, that all I need. Tell me you're mine."

"No…."

"Nothing is mine," Sasuke whispered brokenly, and with a start, Naruto realized that he was crying. Twin tracks of tears cut through the beaded sweat coating his face and his nose was bunched along with his mouth, face brightening as he tried to withhold sobs. "Nothing is mine. Not even this.

"Not even you," Sasuke whispered. "Please… Naruto, please… belong to me. Just me. Let me have you, all of you…"

"Sasuke," Naruto cried,.

"Naruto," Sasuke whispered before his eyes finally slid shut.

Naruto been told orgasm was white. The world would suddenly be filled with light, pleasurably blinding, and causing dots to swim across your vision. That wasn't what he saw. What he saw was just as before, but in a different color. Everything was a different shade of purple, and like a malignant tumor it crept across his mind. The color of a dark beauty, he thought, something so breath-taxingly gorgeous, and one shade lighter than black. The color of violets, the color of bruises. It consumed him as he rode out the pleasure, the tightening in his stomach releasing itself. Everything was drowned in thick purple fog. He could smell it, like sweet grapes, feel it, clawing into his skin. Too dark to see anything, and the color grew darker and darker, dragging away his consciousness.

Something suddenly stilled above him, and then a weight was pressing him into the ground once more. Heavy panting washed over his sweaty skin. The color consumed him still, and he wondered what it was that Sasuke saw.

"You're mine," the raven whispered into his neck. There was shifting, but Naruto couldn't make out more than a blurred outline as the weight was lifted from his chest.

"You are mine," he repeated. "Never forget it."

He was slipping away. Naruto realized it moments before passing out, and he couldn't decide whether he was happy or sad about it.

And in those last few moments, the last before he knew he'd never see Sasuke again, he heard him whisper, "And I'll make sure you never will."

A glint of something shiny caught his attention, but only for a split second. The sun had set, he realized. The sky was black, and so were His eyes. He fell into unconscious.

--

Naruto didn't come to the realization that he was awake until he was a block away from his house. He paused at the street corner. He saw blue and red flashing lights. He kept walking, arms hanging loosely by his sides. He limped heavily and stepped slowly, each inch he gained paying him back with gratuitous amounts of pain. His skin was itchy with drying liquids; blood, sweat, semen and oil. He didn't want to know what he smelled like. Probably road kill.

His clothes clung to him, too small. He'd grown so much in one afternoon, and now he felt the world could not contain him. Or that he could not contain it, and it felt like the whole weight of the world was trying to cram itself onto his back. There was a broken nature in his gate. His blond hair smelled of rust and musk. Fingerprints left in black and blue marred his skin. He was marked, over and over, everywhere. When his wounds healed, he'd still be marked, still soiled. No water, no soap, could ever wash it off.

He didn't remember how he'd gotten outside. He didn't recall dressing, so maybe He dressed him. He'd left Naruto outside, He must have, how else could he have gotten out? He barely had the energy to walk, let alone escape.

Naruto heard voices now, and in them, Iruka's was the loudest. Strong arms, but not as strong as His had been, wrapped around his lanky figure, and spikes of pain shot through him.

"Naruto, oh God, Naruto." He heard sobbing, but at least it wasn't him this time. Swarms of men in blue shirts surrounded him, but his vision had suddenly been filled with warm brown eyes.

"Oh God, Naruto." A hand brushed his face, which Naruto just realized was burning. "Your face… what happened to your face!?"

His face? Nothing had happened to his face. It was the rest of him that Iruka should have been paying attention to. But as if run by unseen forces, his head slowly revolved to the left, towards the windows that ran alone the bottom floor of the apartment. The white blinds had been drawn, and orange light emitted from the lamp post behind him allowed him to see. From the bottoms of his eyes down to his neck, everything was caked in blood. It looked like a mask that only covered the bottom half of his face. So much blood should not be normal, he thought. It couldn't be.

And in that buddle of blood were six distinct tracks, so dark they might as well have been black. Three on each cheek, diagonal slits, like whisker marks.

_"You truly are a monster."_

Where did that world end, Naruto wondered dizzily. And where did this new one start?

_"You are mine."_

Despite his attempts at keeping his heart separate from his body.

_"Never forget it."_

He didn't lose consciousness this time, merely the last remnants of his humanity.

_I don't feel human anymore._

_"And I'll make sure you never will."_

_I feel… His._

--

Three weeks later Iruka was collecting the trash from Naruto's room. His eyes had lost the heavy bags that had gathered beneath them the week after Naruto came home drenched in blood. He wore bandages over his cheeks now, and estimates were being drawn by their insurance company over the prices of cosmetic surgery. It was dangerous, they warned him, to operate on such a highly-muscled area of the face. Permanent disfigurement was always a risk. Iruka and Naruto would have to have a talk about it later on in the week. But not today. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and Naruto had fallen asleep on the living room couch with a comic over his face.

Iruka had grudgingly admitted, if only to himself, that there was one good thing that had come out of the fight Naruto had gotten himself into that day. He'd… not matured, per say. A week passed before he woke up just as bouncy, just as jubilant, demanding ramen and sweets and his manga collection. The blond was elated that he'd missed graduation, and even happier when Iruka mentioned that they could always move, switch schools, if the kids in this district bothered him that much. Iruka was looking into the townhouses in Konoha now, where there high school was in desperate need of new faculty due to n imprecated amount of retirements that year.

So no, it wasn't that Naruto was more mature. Just… older. Like he'd grown several years in the time span of a few hours.

Iruka was turning the thought over in his head when he dumped the wastebasket into the industrial-sized trash bag he was trailing along with him. Something bright orange caught his attention. Blinking, he daintily picked it out from the pile with thumb and forefinger.

It was Naruto's favorite shirt, he thought with a shock, and also the bane of Iruka's existence. It was the brightest shade of orange he'd ever seen with ridiculous amounts of graffiti and doodles printed all over it. It was too baggy, stretched out, and was riddled with holes, and until this point the blond had valiantly defended the article of clothing, refusing to allow his guardian to trash it.

Iruka smiled faintly. Yes, he thought, he certainly has grown.

And with that, he dumped it back into the back, the orange shirt with is crazy mix of large, blocky, obnoxiously purple graffiti.

**To Be Continued**


	2. Part 2

On a quest to find a major, he'd taken a course or two in psychology. Intro to Psychology I and II, then Forensic Psychology, before he'd crammed in the biology and chemistry classes, and put himself on the path to a degree in physical therapy. The pre-meds he'd spent most of his time with were in the possession of several ice picks finely tuned to seat themselves a good three feet up their asses, and he chose not to go the university's brother school to get his PhD. No, he'd chosen to finish it off several states from here, several refills of gas down a long stretch of turnpike, a lot of bottles of Dr. Pepper, many bags of Planter's roasted peanuts, several packets of sunflower seeds, the rinds spit out to skitter along the black road.

He'd taken several courses in psychology. He remembered the visionary and perception section of the unit, perhaps six weeks into his very first semester. The teacher subjected them to several optical illusion tests, having them tilt their heads this way, close one eye and focus with the other, hold their finger up and move it forward slowly. One image was displayed on the overhead, demonstrating that the brain was, in fact, like the Photoshop Microsoft wish it had. Showing how things in the distance were automatically resized. One was a sketch of a highway, a car standing just at the end of it. The way it was pointed was like a triangle sans the top angle.

"The way the world around you hits your retina," the professor had explained, "is upside down, is missing a huge chunk at the bottom center, is speckled, and is completely flat… and your brain has to fill in the gaps for every nanosecond. It's the most complicated form of Photoshop anyone could possibly imagine. It can flip your vision around, show you color, and more importantly, give your world depth. It gives you your three-dimensional world."

"The world is flat," he whispered to himself. He narrowed his eyes against the red sun, so close to dipping below the mountain range, but he was too close to campus to just stop now. And the blazing spot looked very much far away. His fingertips reached up, buffeted by the stream of air flowing around his car, silhouetted again the burning sun.

"Flat," he repeated, weighing the heavy word on his tongue and grimacing. "What a load of bullshit."

Six scar marks almost black in the bleeding sunset, tousled blond hand flying back over his forehead with the air pressure flowing in from four open windows, and blue eyes flashing like violet sapphires in the scarlet light. Naruto Uzumaki drove on, one hand hanging out the window and his foot heavy on the gas pedal, towards Konoha University.

_Part II_

"_All alone he turns to stone while holding his breath half to death. Terrified of what's inside, to save his life, he crawls like a worm from a bird._

_Crawls like a worm from a bird."_

--The Bird and the Worm, _**The Used**_

--

Naruto didn't own much. He made it a goal in his life to have as little as possible in his possession so that, should the house ever burn down, no tears would be shed. It was stupid, he reasoned, to be so materialistic when there were so many more better things he could focus hs affections on.

He had several things he cherished, all of which were placed in the two medium-sized boxes in his truck. He had a small speaker system to plug into his iPod, a lightweight laptop, a small collection of photo frames, a stuffed fox that Iruka had firmly shoved into the box the night before his departure ("They're memories, Naruto! Everyone there probably has one."), and along with those his clothes. He planned on picking up a few potted plants to put into his window after he'd gotten everything settled. His garden was the only thing, besides his guardian, that he missed and was unable to bring with him. He planned to start his own miniature version of once he confirmed that his roommate wasn't a crazy asthmatic.

The campus was huge, but quiet. There were oak trees lining a cobblestone path that wound between tall, chrome buildings. Yellow-tinted grass bent awkwardly in the warm air, and Naruto swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand to get rid of the film of sweat there and shifted the strap of his duffel bag to a different spot on his shoulder. The tail ends of summer fluttered across the windows, a blazing red hot match head glaring with a thousand orange faces glittering in the glass panes. Forecasters foretold a bitter drop in temperature starting the following Sunday, lasting for about a week before climbing right back up. Naruto was content to enjoy the lingering warmth before the cold brought orange and red leaves tumbling to the ground.

He checked the postcard-sized piece of off-white people in his hand, listing emergency contact information on the campus, and a barred off section on the top left listing his building, section, and room number. Buick, Heinz, Room 7. Buick was close to the parking lot Naruto had parked at, and he found the name of it engraved into a stone slab in front of a tall chrome building. Naruto knew from his new student orientation that the bottom six floors of the dorm buildings were comprised of dorm rooms, while the top two and ground floor were recreation rooms, lounges, a small café, and group study areas. It was convenient, and it was expensive.

Full-tuition scholarships were a beautiful thing, the blond man thought.

Naruto had held this dream of his for five or six years. He always knew he'd end up at med school. The debate lay within whether or not it would end in his sitting in a therapists' lounge chair or in scrubs with his hands coated in blood. But after the first year or so in college, he realized that if he couldn't sort his own mind out, then he had a snowball's chance in hell of fixing others'.

The move had been easy enough. Naruto had only moved one other time in his life, and that was to a small town house a state away from his previous home. Iruka didn't have any living relatives in the immediate vicinity anyway, so the jump wasn't so much of a leap as it was a pleasant change in scenery. For Naruto it meant something slightly different, however…

He used the key card he'd picked up last Friday to unlock the door, and he heard a clean shifting of metal. He grasped the handle and pushed, the door swinging as if it were made of paper. He stepped over the threshold and found the inside of it pleasantly cool. The lower floor, he knew, contained the expansive laundry room, as well as one of the several lounges. New students and parents littered the uncomfortable chairs or leaned against the freshly painted walls. Some people were attempting awkward conversation as they strove to mark their place in the social status of the area. Having no interesting in mingling with the masses quite yet, Naruto instead trudged up the stairs that were through the double doors on the right.

He passed the first floor, and then the second, before topping his sixth set of steps and coming to the third landing for dorms. Shifting the bag once more to rest in a more comfortable position, wondering how he'd gotten the bad luck to end up on the fourth floor, before pushing the doors one more time and stepping into a hallway that had an almost palpable scent of fresh paint. Wincing, he checked his card one more time. Room 7, it said. To his right was the number 2, and just ahead and to the left the number 1. He walked down the hallway, noting the spacious corkboards with start-of-the-year notices and a few flyers describing special classes, and wondered how long it would take to think of this place as 'home'.

The door to his room was already open, and he could hear muffled curses and thumps from inside. Cocking an eyebrow, Naruto stepped in and took a look around, grinning a bit. It was exactly the way he'd thought it would look. It sounded stupid, but one of the reasons Naruto had chosen this school was because of the living arrangements. The dorms were huge, spacious, and came with their own bathrooms and miniature kitchenettes. Iruka had told him that it wasn't a materialistic way of thinking when he'd voiced his thoughts, that it was good to factor in the dorm rooms.

_"You'll work harder the more comfortable you are," _Iruka had assured him. And with that in mind, he turned to meet his new roommate.

His bag slid to the floor.

The other man looked up, eyebrows raised in curiosity. His hair was messy and tousled, probably from the wind, although it looked like it had a bit of gel in it that kept it that way. His brown eyes were wide and wild, practically dancing in their sockets. He had tanned skin and a rugged face, looking like he hadn't shaved in a day or two. He wore tattered jeans, a loose-fitting white shirt and a denim blazer over top of it. His hands, which were pushing the heavy-looking box off his foot, looked large and as if they'd seen a recent fight; the knuckles were scabbed over, and scars marred the backs of his hands.

Naruro raised his now-free hand and gave a small wave, sliding one hand into his pocket and grinning. "Hey. You must be my new roommate."

The brunet grinned, and Naruto noted how white and somewhat pointed his teeth were. "Guilty." He had a rough, boyish voice, one that probably drove librarians crazy; this man looked like the type who didn't know the meaning of "indoor voice". He strode forward, holding out a hand for Naruto to shake, which he did with genuine earnest. "I'm Kiba. Kiba Inuzuka."

"Naruto Uzumaki," the blond replied, his grin widening. The brunet was a few inches taller than him (but then again, Naruto thought bitterly, so were most) even without his shoes on. Hell, he didn't even have socks on.

_A no-shoes kinda guy, _Naruto thought. _I like him already._

"How are ya?" Kiba asked, but before Naruto could reply, he nodded his head at the discarded duffel bag Naruto had dumped on the floor. "Tell me you have more shit than that."

Naruto laughed. "I do, I do. I just wanted to find the place first."

Kiba nodded, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning more on one foot. "So what brings you here? Your accent's kinda strange; you're not from the West coast, are ya?"

"Nah, East," Naruto affirmed, slightly surprised by how astute the man was. "I've been moving steadily West for around a decade, so I thought, Why not go all the way?"

Kiba let out a loud laugh. Not one that symbolized total amusement, but perhaps of happiness, and maybe a bit of relief that so far, his roommate didn't seem to be a total jerk.

"What's your major?" he asked.

Naruto shrugged, scratching the back of his head a bit nervously. "I'm not sure, exactly. I'm still fiddling with a few ideas."

"That's cool," Kiba said. "So am I, and so are most people around here." He paused. "This actually isn't my first med school. I went for two years to another one before transferring."

"Oh," Naruto said, blinking. "I thought they tried to stick classman with classman?"

"They do, they do," Kiba replied. "But the bastards wouldn't accept the other school's credits." Before Naruto could ask why, he said, "It was a school specializing for veterinarians."

Naruto hummed, and glanced at what must have been the bed his roommate had claimed as his own. Over it was a throw with the pattern of a wolf on it, and on the side table was a picture frame with what looked like Kiba and a colossal dog. "Why'd you drop out? You seem like the animal type of guy."

Kiba grinned. "Exactly, man. My reasons for not being a vet are the same reasons why doting adults don't become pediatricians. I don't want to see the animals I love get hurt, and I sure as Hell couldn't put one of them down."

Naruto chuckled and grinned brightly. He understood. "I definitely like you," he said in a relieved tone of voice.

Kiba let out another bark of laughter before slapping Naruto twice on the shoulder and yanking him forward, one arm slung around his neck, and pulling him deeper into the dorm. "Same here, man. You have no clue how relieve I am I didn't get stuck with a stiff."

Naruto snorted. "Lucky us. This place is crawling with them."

"It's med school, what can you expect?" Kiba asked.

Naruto walked over to the window that over-looked the center of a small section of the courtyard and Kiba's arm slid away from his shoulders. "So what do you think of the campus, huh?"

"It's awesome!" Kiba said, wild eyes flashing. "I'd love to take my dog around here, Akamaru."

"Is he the one in the picture?" Naruto asked, nodding his head towards the photo frame.

"Yeah. He's four."

"Four!?" Naruto exclaimed. "He's huge!"

Kiba laughed. "That's what everyone says, but honestly, I've never noticed."

Naruto was about to ask how anyone could fail to notice--he was sure that Kiba could see tickets for pony rides on that beast--when he noticed a third presence in the room. While Kiba began on a small rant about his dog's antics when he'd started to pack up all of his things for college, Naruto cocked an eyebrow at the boy who was setting a large box on the floor and setting up a rolling suitcase to stand on its plastic feet. He was pale, sickeningly so, with dark sunglasses, a short, fuzzy brown afro, and a face besmirched by an assortment of skin problems. "Hey, can I help you?" Naruto asked.

The pale man looked blandly at him. "I was unaware that this was a three person dormitory."

"It isn't," Kiba said, coming to stand beside Naruto. "Who're you?"

"Shino," he said shortly. He held out a card that Naruto realized was the same type as his. "And I live here."

"What?" The two strode forward, and Naruto took the offered card. Room 7. "That's weird… Could it have been a typo?"

"Naruto," Kiba said, "let me see your card." The blond fished it out, unfolded it, and handed it to Kiba. After a moment, the brunet sighed and smacked Naruto lightly over the side of the head. "You idiot, you're on the wrong floor. This says that you're on the fourth floor."

Naruto frowned. "I know that. I am on the fourth floor."

"No you're not; you're counting the lounge area. The floor numbers started with the first level of dorms." He handed the card back with a dejected look on his face. "You're one floor up, Heinz. This is Kelmett, the third floor."

"Oh," Naruto frowned, and then looked over at the boy who's introduced himself as Shino, who hadn't spoken another word. "Sorry man."

Shino shrugged, and Naruto gave Kiba an apologetic look, feeling disappointed as well. "I'll come down and visit once I get my stuff up to my room, then," Naruto promised.

Shino turned and walked to grab his suitcase, and Kiba winced at the stoic man's bag. "Please, do," he said. "Please."

Naruto laughed. "It was nice meeting you." He stuck out his hand, which Kba shook rigorously, before he turned and walked to the door, grabbing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. "Nice meeting you too, man. Sorry 'bout the confusion."

"It is fine," Shino sad passively. "It was nice meeting you… Naruto."

Naruto grinned and shook his head, and with a wave of his hand, left the two and headed towards the stairs once more.

--

The room was around two feet wider to each side, reaching a greater depth of around a yard going the other way, and Sasuke's hair was still black and look soft and silky as a freshly spun spider web.

It took the older man a few moments to look up from the book and to meet the gaze of his new roommate, and when he did, Naruto knew time had stopped. No one should sit that still. Not a strand of hair moved from atop his head. The only thing that ruined it was the rapid beating of his heart, which held no promise of a ceasefire any time soon.

_I've missed something_, Naruto thought blankly. _I fell asleep at one point, I think. Because I haven't done anything, anything, to deserve this. I'm asleep._

_I must be asleep._

He took his time in observing the dream. Most night visions of Sasuke involved not ever seeing his face, just hearing his voice, panting and moaning and groaning behind him, always ending in the whispered mantra of, _I'll make sure you never will._

He waited for his dream to speak. When it didn't, the blond spoke for it. "What are you doing here?" he asked. Why are you out of place, he meant. Why do I have to see your face, that hasn't changed a bit? Can't you stick to your kitchen and on your own floor, with your head silhouetted against your own fucking ceiling? There was no reason, no reason at all he knew, for him to be changing spots all of a sudden. This wasn't musical chairs. You picked one nightmare and stuck with it.

Sasuke stared at him, blandly, for a long stretch of time. The look in his eyes was a familiar one, the one he'd spent so much time in his sleep pondering over, the emotion always nameless and yet so transparent. He knew what it was, but he didn't _know. _He could pick it up and examine it and find it a sight he'd seen before and had become accustomed to, but didn't know what it was or meant. Sasuke blinked now and then, and Naruto copied the motion a split-second later, so as to not miss a beat. If he shut his eyes and Sasuke were gone, Naruto knew exactly where he would end up. Right behind him, right up against him, cursing in a foreign language and pushing aside his clothes, pressing his face against the carpet by a firm grip in his hair. He would smell dust and copper and taste ash, and he would wake up screaming and frighten Iruka.

And then, Sasuke spoke. "What happened to your face?"

Naruto couldn't help it. In the next moment, he saw red.

--

"Dude, fight in Heinz!"

"That didn't take long at all."

"This isn't high school. This isn't even college. The fuck do they thing they're doing?"

Kiba and Shino heard these snippets of conversation outside the cracked door of their shared dormitory, the former taping a picture of a wolf's head embedded in an arctic landscape, the other propping up the deep picture frame containing several specimens of different kinds of beetle.

"What idiots," Kiba commented, snorting before climbing off of the bed and back to the floor, tossing the roll of scotch tape in his hands to the already cluttered bed side table. "What do they think this is? Kindergarten?"

Shino answered with another question, as was his annoying habit. "That is Sasuke and Naruto's floor, is it not?"

"Who's Sasuke?" Kiba asked.

"Naruto's new roommate."

"You know him?"

"Not well." He finished lining the bottom length of the dram to exactly an inch from the edge of the table and stepped back to observe it. "We finished pre-med together."

"What kind of guy is he?" Kiba asked, not altogether curious but willing enough to keep an awkward silence from reigning. He was still slightly put-off that Naruto turned out not to be his roommate.

"Quiet." Shino knelt down next to the open box by his feet. "Reserved." He withdrew another one, this with a dozed colorful butterflies dead and frozen in time. Kiba winced at the sight of them. Bugs bothered him, sure, but still, to pin them up… "And an old friend of Naruto's."

"_What_? Really? He told you that?"

"He mentioned him once or twice," Shino replied, now aligning up the two frames. "I believe they were in somewhat of a relationship prior to high school…"

"Shit, you're not kidding?" Kiba breathed, finally intrigued. "Fuck it's a small world."

"Hm."

"Still…" Kiba chuckled. "Experimenting when they were so young… Not a lot of good comes out of that. Unless you count some good laugh---"

_**Thud**_

__"What're they doing up there?"

"The brawl," Shino said shortly.

"Oh, yeah. Geez, people just need to calm the… fuck…."

"Are the layouts of the floor not the same?"

Silence, in which Kiba eyed the ceiling with a cocked eyebrow, wondering if his new roommate enjoyed fucking with his head and drawing out the realization of what exactly was going on up there, or if Shino truly didn't care.

And before Shino could finish say, "I do not believe that the reunion is going well," Kiba was out the door and flying towards the stairs.

--

_Kill him, _his mind hissed. _No one would miss him. Make up for those years ago. Grab his throat and strangle it until his eyeballs roll out._

In what Naruto surveyed as a most ungracious attitude, Sasuke refused to let himself be thwarted. He moved with genuine grace (just like I remember). With every punch that made its mark, whether it be the ribcage or his face, Sasuke would move with it, leaning back with the force and swerving around it to clip Naruto in his side or on the side of the head. From the moment he'd yanked the taller man off of the bed with his fist furled in a collar, followed by a fist to his cheek, to the here and now, nearly a minute later, Naruto was fueled with what he would compare to nitro glycerin. Every second was another fiery explosion going off in his head, every scrape of tan skin against pale skin was another electrifying memory that he'd tried to suppress for years. Every week, or every month, was a detail of the afternoon that he tried to cover up with worries over school work, the teenage depressions of one-week girlfriends, of the constraining rules Iruka put on him that were no constraining at all, over the real troubles of having to see a therapist once a month for an hour in a stuffy room.

He felt like he was picking up where he'd left off the last time they'd met, with free arms and a more focused mind. He could barely see the other man's face, but he could catch glimpses of black eyes submersed in pale skin. But he could barely hear around the words _kill him _floating around in his head, shrouding away all other thoughts. He heard shouting, noises that didn't come from the two of them, somewhere behind him, and shadows moved like stringless puppets across the walls; disjointed and shuddering, waving in and out of focus.

He felt sick, undeniably sick. He felt like he was fighting a tiger and the only way to keep it from eating him was to keep on fighting back. He felt a swell of hate and pain bubbling over his insides, and his vision slowly became distorted as if through a thick, foggy purple piece of glass. Nothing looked quite right anymore, and for the second time in his life, he felt like he had the power and the will to take another person's life, the will to sacrifice his heart just to destroy another's.

_I truly am a monster._

A pair of hands appeared out of thin air and encircled his chest, and another hand clutched at his shoulder, causing him to jerk awkwardly. He didn't realize he was on his knees whilst trying to pin Sasuke down, just to beat his face in until it would never be recognizable again, until he was yanked to his feet and dragged back. His muscles tensed and sprang within his body, and his eyes still couldn't properly see. He wouldn't just kill Sasuke, but those people behind him, too. He'd kill them all, whoever dared to stop him would fall to the ground. But first he had to get to Sasuke, Sasuke, Sasuke,

"_S-Sasuke!"_

He went to jelly in supporting arms he did not recognize. His mind was buzzed with memory and the present. He heard a faintly recognizable voice--Kiba. He was shouting at the people behind him. The other, who also had a strong hand on his shoulder, wasn't talking, and Naruto's eyes drew up to look at him blandly, if not to identify him then to not have to look at the raven who lay have-sprawled across the floor. He had a bored looked face, a bit broad, with a slight widow's peak. His slightly bushy brown hair was pulled back into a lazy ponytail. Nothing special brown eyes viewed him as they might paint drying on a wall, and yet the grip on his shoulder said otherwise.

The others were slowly singling out of the room, many of them young adults, some not-so-much, and the door stayed open. Naruto was aware that his pulse had begun to slow, and his breath began to even out. His vision cleared, and out of the corner of his eye he saw movement. But Naruto refused to look at him. Hands were gently guiding him to sit down on the bed, and that was enough of a distraction with him.

"Hey, are you all right?" Kiba was whispering into his ear. "My asshole of a roommate said you knew this bastard. Was he picking a fight with you?"

Sasuke and the mystery man were talking in hushed tones, and Naruto heard the words "misunderstanding" and "fine", along with several others, thrown into the mix. He clamped his eyes shut, and was a hair's width away from pressing his hands over his ears, as well.

"Naruto? Naruto!"

"_Naruto…."_

"Wh-what?" Naruto murmured, finally opening his eyes and setting his gaze on Kiba. "What?"

Kiba frowned. "Shino knows Sasuke, and he said you two--knew each other or something. Was he right?"

"Yeah," Naruto murmured. "We know--we've met."

Kiba snorted. "Met right." He frowned. "Dude, if you want, I'd be cool if you wanted to bunk with Shino and me until we found you a new place. People switch dorms all the time. You don't have to stay with this ass if you don't want."

Kiba was right, Naruto knew. People did switch dorms all time… in college. In college where you went to socialize and brush aside all the requirements until you got down to what you really wanted to study. Switching dorms like a coward, like traveling back four years in his life. This was medical school, not an episode of Dr. Phil. He was here for one purpose, and for one purpose only: to learn to save people's lives.

_It'll be pretty hard learning how to save people's lives when I'm gonna be so busy trying to save my own, _Naruto thought bitterly. Just as he knew the difference between med school and college, he knew that his fate was set the moment he stepped foot through the dorm's threshold. When he was fourteen, he made the stupid mistake of not marching right back up to the apartment building and beat the Uchiha within an inch of his life. Like a beaten puppy with its tail quivering between his legs, he'd run away.

And he was so, so sick of running.

_Why here? _Naruto thought desperately. _Here, of all places in the United States, how the fuck did he end up here? It's not even remotely close to where we used to live, and it's a fucking universe away from Japan! Can't he stay where he belongs for once?_

"I'm good," Naruto mutter belatedly. "I was just surprised to see him is all."

Kiba wasn't convinced. "You seem more than surprised."

Naruto chuckled weakly. "No, really, I'm good." He attempted to smile, but it felt wrong on his face, and from the look Kiba gave him, it didn't look much better. "I am, trust me. Me and him will work it out." He couldn't even say his name. He wasn't going to survive this, there was no way…

Kiba frowned, and then glared to his right. Naruto didn't follow his gaze. "All right, if you're sure." He turned back to Naruto, clapped him once on the shoulder. "I'm right downstairs, all right? Stomp on the floor if you need me."

Naruto grimaced again. "I'll keep that in mind."

"You do that." Kiba stood, stretched, and then walked away from the bed without a word. "C'mon, Nara."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming."

There was silence. The door clicked softly shut, and still there was silence. Naruto could hear muffled voices and thumps as people moved things into their rooms and met with new neighbors. Nothing in the room shifted, and the air seemed stale and stiff. Everything, Naruto realized, everything was just as it was eight years ago. The tiles in their small nook of a kitchen, the hard and flat carpet that smelled faintly of dust, the bare walls that looked like no one had ever set foot inside. The room was filled with a burnt orange tinge, illuminating the glass panes of the window as the sun began to die. Naruto wondered, not for the first time, what he'd ever done to deserve this. Was he the reincarnation of Hitler and in for some serious retribution? Or did bad luck truly stick to him as if by magnet?

For a few wild moments, Naruto wondered if Sasuke had followed Kiba and whoever 'Nara' was out the door. Perhaps it was less wondering that it was wishful thinking. Like he could feel his hands attached to his wrists, and his feet to his ankles, and the throbbing mantra growing louder and louder in his head that running away wasn't cowardly but smart, he could feel Sasuke in the room. He wondered if this was how Stockholm Syndrome victims felt; so bonded to their captives that they couldn't feel right, feel whole, unless they were close by. He now realized that for eight years he'd been a glass half empty, and Sasuke's presence brought him bubbling over and spilling across the table.

Quiet footsteps were the only warning Naruto got before he caught a glimpse of black in his peripheral vision. As if scolded by hot water, Naruto couldn't help but recoil. He brought his feet up to the mattress and pushed himself back until his shoulders met the wall, and even then he didn't stop pushing. The balls of hit feet were tense and aching with the effort required to attempt to push a hole into the wall.

"Naruto?" murmured a nearly unrecognizable voice. It was deep and clear, very quiet, and nearly devoid of any accent. Naruto was sure that any stranger wouldn't be able to pick it up, but he could. He noticed the strong emphasis on the 'r' part of the name and knew it to be because Sasuke put more effort in pronouncing it, to get it right. He had the voice of someone you could hear all the way across the room even if they were whispering. Who spoke so quietly into the phone you had to press the earpiece hard into your ear just to hear it. He sounded patronizing, almost, as if trying to soothe an injured and frightened animal.

"Naruto." A hand reached out, tentatively, and Naruto felt it softly cup his shoulders through the suddenly too-thin t-shirt. He flinched away from it, but didn't reach up a hand to bat it away. The fight inside of him had flared up and then died once Kiba had dragged him away. Now he was tired and wanted the joke to be over so he could go back to sleep.

"Naruto?" The question was back in his voice.

"Go away," Naruto croaked. He curled his legs up and circled them with his arms, training his eyes on his knees. He felt rooted there, too afraid to move and try to brush past him.

_No, I'm done running, I tried it before and it didn't work and I'm not doing it again…._

"I-"

"I don't care. Get out."

"Naruto, I live here."

_"I can't. This my apartment."_

"I can't believe this…" Sasuke murmured. "You're… really still upset about that, aren't you?"

What?

Just like that, Naruto's thoughts derailed and his mind went into a stunned state of emptiness. Anger was replaced by confusion, shortly followed by anger. Upset? Naruto wasn't upset, he was livid, and Sasuke had about ten seconds to correct himself before the blond went in for the kill.

The door was shut. No one would hear, at least not in time to stop him. Screw saving peoples' lives. He had his own to protect first.

"When you didn't call me," Sasuke murmured, "I thought that maybe you lost the number."

What?

_What the fuck is he trying to pull?_

"But that didn't make any sense either. I gave you everything… my number, my address, even the school I went to." Naruto couldn't see his face, but he was too afraid to look and see if the raven truly did believe in what bull shit he was spouting. "You could have found me easily if you had wanted. I lived two towns over from your new place…"

Naruto's gaze snapped up at first, and for a short moment, he forgot what made him do it or what he'd wanted to say. He hadn't gotten a good look at Sasuke's face before, but now he got an eye-full. It was long and ovular, a pointed and smooth chin beneath a gently frowning mouth. He had fine eyebrows arched with confusion over glassy black eyes. At so close a distance, he noted that they were gray, albeit an incredibly dark gray. He had a long, slender pale neck, half of his sharp collarbone hidden by the neck of a light gray button-up t-shirt. His shoulders were broad, his chest deep and his sides slanting down to hide below the bed. For the first time, Naruto noted that Sasuke was kneeling on the floor, one hand leaning on the mattress, the other limp on Naruto's arm. Naruto shook the aforementioned appendage, and Sasuke's hand slid down to rest on the bed beside him.

"How did you know where I lived?" Naruto asked, snapping out of his reverie.

Sasuke eyebrows furrowed slightly. "Are you playing stupid on purpose?" he asked. "You told me in my apartment, remember? You came over and told me you were moving…"

"No," Naruto denied blankly. "I came over to give you homework…."

"Homework?" Sasuke blinked with equal confusion. "Why?"

"Because you missed school!"

"Naruto, I've never missed a day of school since I came to the states," Sasuke said quietly, chidingly. "You came over in pieces because Iruka told you that you were moving…"

"In pieces?" Naruto echoed. "Why the fuck would I be in pieces? I hated that place! I hated that school! I _wanted _to move you crazy, fucked-up--"

"Stop lying!" Sasuke hissed. "You were upset that you were leaving. You told me you didn't want to go--"

"I didn't!" Naruto insisted. "I didn't even find out until two weeks after… after you---"

"After I what? After I left? Naruto, that's not possible. You told me so and I wanted to stay longer, but you insisted I go."

His head hurt, Naruto realized, and his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, staring at the man before him with alarm written clearly upon every line of his face. Sasuke was insane, he realized with a spark of dread. His mind was completely fucked over, from what Naruto didn't know and didn't want to know.

"But…" The crease between his brows smoothed out slightly. "You said you'd miss me." Was Naruto seeing things, or was that a ghost of a smile playing on the edges of Sasuke's mouth? "You said that I was different." He chuckled. "It was true, wasn't it? You and I were the only different ones in that prissy school."

Lost. He was lost and confused and frightened. Words bubbled painfully on the tip of his tongue, and he was just waiting for his nerve to catch up to him so that he could spew them out.

"I started to worry a week after you didn't call…" Sasuke murmured, eyes distant, lost in a memory. "When you didn't write. You said that you'd call me when you got the new number for your house, but…" His eyes drew down, to the side, then back up. "I thought that maybe you were mad, or lonely, or…. Maybe you were busy with new friends. Maybe you'd forgotten about me.

"I went to the town that you said you'd live in, but it was huge and I was sixteen. No one helped me and I had school starting again in two weeks… I looked you up in the phone books, I checked for you name in different public schools… and I couldn't find a thing. I waited for you to contact me during the school year, after you'd gotten settled, but nothing. I transferred in the middle of the year to a different state, and you hadn't called or written or anything, so I just… gave up."

Naruto stared, dumbly. What was this? Was this even the right Sasuke? Was there some other Japanese man with the same name with a childhood friend who had the same name as Naruto?

"But what happened?" Sasuke asked. "What happened after you left my apartment? You knew I was there for the rest of the week, I invited you to come back, but you didn't… And, where did you get those scars?"

It was odd, Naruto thought, to hear him speak so much. It was almost like he'd had this so well-rehearsed for such a long time that he felt compelled to let it all out now. But when Sasuke's hand returned, this time to gently cup his cheek, Naruto reacted.

"You gave them to me," he whispered, disbelief dripping from every syllable. "You fucking gave them to be, you bastard. Whatever kind of sick mind game you're trying to play won't--"

Sasuke cut him off and drowned out the rest of his sentence. "_I _have them to you?" he asked, narrow eyes widening slightly. "What--"

"You gave them to me," Naruto repeated. He felt his anger, felt his fight, come back and spring inside of him, erecting itself into a hot, thick surge of pure rage. "You carved them into my face with a steak knife."

"Do you even know what you're saying!?"

"You did, don't fucking lie to me!" He didn't even register the fact that Sasuke's fingers had dug slightly harder into his skin. "You gave them to me right after…. Right after you…"

"Right after I what?" Sasuke persisted, edging closer, too close for Naruto's comfort level, penetrating into his personal space on a whole new level.

"After you raped me."

Sasuke's hand slid from his face. He didn't pull away, but his face did fall, and his jaw slackened enough so that his mouth hung agape by an inch. His eyes grew as round and seemingly large as dinner plates, and there was such a chaos of confusion and hurt that Naruto felt himself drowning in a sudden wave of guilt. As if someone had gotten him a kitten and he'd thrown it against the wall. The giver's face probably would have resembled something close to Sasuke's right now.

A pregnant pause, long and tense, in which neither of them spoke a word. And then, in a hiss like from a King Cobra, Sasuke snarled, "How dare you."

_When were our roles reversed?_ Naruto thought frantically, shrinking further back against the wall while Sasuke slowly drew up and stood at his full height, towering over him. Naruto couldn't tell without a tape measurer, but he felt sure that Sasuke must have been a full head taller than him. It was a frightening sight.

"Quit cowering like a kicked dog!" Sasuke snapped at him, black eyes alight with a raging fury that Naruto thought might very well rival the one that was now quailing inside of him. "And don't you dare belittle what we did! Do you even hear what you're saying?"

"I know what I'm saying, you mother-fucking _ass_hole!" Naruto snarled back. 'You. Raped. M--"

"Don't fucking say that!" Sasuke roared, eyes clenching and unclenching as if they'd love nothing more than to throttle the blond until he was blue in the face. "I had your full consent! You wanted to! I must have asked you at least a dozen times--"

"How would I even be able to answer, huh!? You had me gagged and tied on your kitchen floor!"

"I didn't!" Now Sasuke looked scared, eyes switching from narrow and dangerous to full and platonic. "Naruto, you know I didn't. I'd never--you know I'd never--"

"You never fucking asked me," Naruto growled, shaking all over. He wondered if the room itself was shaking, because there was no way his body could produce on its own tremors this strong. His teeth chattered in his mouth, and his skin felt cold and clammy. "You had my face in the damned floor and you wouldn't stop when I asked you and I begged you--I fucking _begged _you, you Godforsaken asshole--and you just kept going and kept on moving and you wouldn't _stop_--" He felt tears begin to well up in his eyes and his voice cracked several times. He clamped his jaw tightly shut to avoid making a further fool of himself. It was just like that time, nothing had changed. He couldn't move, he couldn't fight, all he could do was cry and cry and _damnit, why can't I ever stop crying!?_

"Naruto," Sasuke whispered, backing away and slowly shaking his head, disappointment and that foreign emotion flicking and flitting across his eyes and his face, shown in the way his eyebrows puckered together and his lips tightened and dipped downwards. "If you didn't want to see me again… if you're that mad… all you had to do was say so. You don't need to insult me like this."

"I'm not--"

"I understand." And to his relief, and partly to his dismay, Sasuke turned around and walked back to his bed. He began to shuffle through the box and pulled out a stack of books on what looked like organic chemistry. "The policy regarding dorms is to wait three weeks to try and resolve any conflicts. I'll put my name in to switch dorms. Until then," he shot Naruto a look that tore his heart into thin, bloody slivers, "please try and deal with your rapist of a roommate. Or if you'd like, go and room with Kiba for a while. I heard the offer."

Naruto remained silent as Sasuke continued to unpack the rest of his books and sort them into different stacks on top of the mattress. His thoughts were too muddled, too chaotic, to sort through right now. He simply sat and studied, watching Sasuke's shoulders as they shifted beneath his shirt, the way his long pale fingers sometimes swept down the spine as he read the title before sorting it into a category. This continued for another few minutes, with Naruto's quiet observation and Sasuke's blatant ignoring of it, and Naruto jolted when there was a knock on the door. Sasuke didn't so much as blink, merely opening a book to read the inner flap.

After another long moment, Naruto cautiously slid off the bed and gingerly stood on his feet. He was starting to feel the aches and pain of the impromptu brawl that occurred not even fifteen minutes ago, and he worked his sore jaw, before padding softly to the door. Opening it, he was met with the wild brown eyes of who was supposed to be his roommate.

"Hey man," Kiba said, obviously disgruntled. "Shino's being an ass and I needed a break. You wanna talk a walk around the campus with me? We can get the rest of your stuff."

Naruto paused, gnawed on his lower lip for a moment, before replying, "Sure. Why not?"

"Awesome." Kiba grinned wolfishly and stood to the side, allowing Naruto to pass by him on the way out. Before he shut the door, he asked, "So, what about it? You change your mind? I could use the company; you can kick Shino out of his bed. It shoulda been yours anyway."

Naruto glanced into the room, quickly, just once--_running, running, I'm always and forever fucking running--_"Nah, he and I are cool now. It was just a misunderstanding."

The brunet rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, whatever. If you ask me, I can see how Shino and that ass know each other. Two of a kind, they are."

And while Kiba strode past him, Naruto reached to shut the door to quickly pull it shut. But he wasn't fast enough to miss the last look Sasuke shot him through the gap of their door.

He didn't look hurt, or angry, or upset or sad. Again, the emotion Naruto couldn't pinpoint. He couldn't understand.

The click of the door as it shut was resounding, and he trailed after his new friend.

--

The way their room was built, Naruto realized as he surveyed it in the dark, was very much the same as Kiba's. It seemed larger, perhaps because of the lack of mess, but the structure was the same. It was rectangular for the most part. At least, it was longer than it was wide from the perspective of the door. Stepping in and looking to the left was a small nook with a bare TV stand, a small circular coffee table made of oak, and a three-seater sofa. Straight ahead from the door, past the island that separated it from the living area, was a kitchenette. It too was built into a corner. A large refrigerator and a sink made up one side, and a set of cabinets and drawers dovetailed with the oven made up the other. A half-wall separated it from an oak door that led into the bathroom. From there, the wall was built out, and then dipped back in to form the largest section of the dorm. Two twin beds, one laying under the window and nudged into the corner while the other ran parallel to the wall adjacent it. The window was large, a two-panel affair with off-white blinds, emitting in soft light from the lamp posts outside. The whole miniature-apartment was covered in a rough blue carpet dotted with flecks of forest green, and the fabric of the sofa matched it. All-in-all, a nice enough dormitory. And Naruto had already found over a dozen places in which he could easily kill himself. Hang himself from the fan that slowly revolved above their "bedroom", or even in one of the two closets that were built into the far wall where the bathroom was. Drown himself in the bathtub. Stick his head in the open oven door. Open the double-paned window and launch himself through it and pray that a seven-story drop was enough to finish him off.

_"Mine."_

Like a song he remembered from childhood, it remained stuck in his head, and he knew it wouldn't leave until he heard it again. And again, and again, until he tired of it.

_"Tell me you are mine."_

_If I told you that, _Naruto thought, shrunken back against the wall, thoughts gyrating out of control. _If I told you that belonged to you, and only you, just like you wanted to hear then, would that make this any better? Would you let me go if you thought I loved you? Would it get boring, eventually, and you'd back off?_

_Or would you become even more of a monster?_

_"You truly are a monster."_

He shuddered and shrank back further against the wall.

The pillow was too warm, damp with sweat, under his flushed cheek but he didn't dare move. He wouldn't move in fear of waking the beast that was curled up in the bed not six feet from him. And he didn't dare turn to face the wall; what if Sasuke were to sneak up on him? He couldn't close his eyes, and he kept his blinks as infrequent as possible. His breathing was even, slow, and near soundless. But he was paranoid that his rampant heartbeat made up for all of that with its great, galloping pounding. He could hear it and rushing blood in his ears. If it was so loud to him, surely Sasuke had to hear it, too.

How could he forget?

Naruto felt two types of angry, one healthy, the other one he'd very much like to not dwell upon. Firstly that inner-hate harbored within him had exploded again in an explosion fit to give Pearl Harbor a run for its money. Seeing that man's face made him feel several sorts of frightened and angered at the same time, and the blood in his veins throbbed and roared just with the thought of it. The other anger was that Sasuke had forgotten, or chose to forget.

He'd forgotten.

_Was it really so unimportant to you?_

_It didn't mean anything!_

_Then why so broken?_

_He's forgotten all about it._

_Am I really not worth remembering?_

He dissected himself for hours, curled up by the wall, arms encircling his legs and cupping his calves. It was a warm night, but he wore long sweatpants with the drawstring tugged tightly and knotted twice, sure to leave an angry red indent by morning, thick socks, and a baggy sweatshirt that he kept covering his hands. His chin was slightly tucked into the neck of the sweatshirt, and if he'd had a scarf, he surely would have worn that too. For now, he was content with having the hood pulled up and over his head. When Sasuke had emerged from the bathroom (he'd been showering by the time Naruto returned to the dorm), he'd been wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs (Naruto was ashamed to admit that his first thought was, He's fleshed out, before turning his face back to the bright screen of his laptop) and had promptly crawled into bed. Neither spoke a word to each other.

_"What happened to your face?"_

_What happened to your heart?_

Naruto would have been content with a smirk. A, "Do you remember me?" A string of confusing Japanese spoken in a sardonic tone. Broken English. Anything, anything but those hurt words, that concerned look that made him feel like a runaway from a psychiatric clinic, betrayal, and that horrible stare Naruto felt like Sasuke had practiced he did it so well.

And yet could not name.

Sasuke shifted in his sleep, and Naruto's eyes narrowed. All of a sudden, something came to his notice. Sasuke's breathing was even, but it was too deep. It was like it was being purposefully suppressed so as to not alert the other, and no person should sleep looking that tense. And he hadn't changed positions in--Naruto checked the alarm clock on the bedside table--five and a half hours. No one slept like that…

Unless Sasuke wasn't really asleep.

Naruto tensed at the thought, and then even further when Sasuke shifted again, this time to curl into himself more as if under the assault of rapid pistol fire.

His breathing isn't right, Naruto realized. Maybe he's choking on his sleep. Wouldn't that just solve everything?

The breathing hitched once more, and Sasuke curled up into a fetal position on the bed, face planted firmly in the pillows and opposite Naruto's direction. And as if by medication, Naruto's eyes slowly started to droop. His body relaxed further against the wall, and his eyes were drawn to the pillow. How nice it looked, how soft, how stiff his back was. It would be possible, he thought, to stay awake while laying down. People did it all the time. So why not him?

His flushed cheeks met with the cool linen of his new pillowcase, and it was the most wonderful thing he could remember feeling. His posture loosened as Sasuke's tightened, and his breathing began to slow. His mind was wrung dry and not even a drop of fear was left now. Nothing left to feel but the cool sheets, and nothing but the soft sounds of Sasuke's crying to lull him into a deep sleep.

"_I'll fine you somewhere, show you how much I care. Know that there is no escape from my snow brigade."_

--Snow Brigade, _**Mew**_


	3. Part 3

**Author's Notes: **_Because, yes, I do read the reviews and, yes, I do take advice to heart._

**Disclaimer: Despite events taking place in this story, situations pertaining to rape should not be taken lightly. It is not an act of courage to not go to the police or to someone if you or someone you know has been raped and/or assaulted. Sexual harassment is a crime and should be treated as such, and reported to the proper authorities, no matter how little you or anyone else thinks can be done about the situation. Do not assume that your story will be taken lightly, or that you will be labeled a liar.**

_There. A bit of a serious note for a fanfic, but I agreed with the reviewer who sent me the request so, hey, what can you do._

_Sorry for the lateness of the chapter. Also, the story is now five parts instead of four. If it was four, this wouldn't be out for another month. So there._

_**-Kodak**_

--

_Is it strange that I've missed this?_

_Is it wrong that I've missed this?_

_Or is it only normal to miss what you've always had?_

_Whether it be good, or bad?_

_Things were as Naruto remembered them so well. The fuzziness of the carpet, like the white snow on a television screen, swerved in and out of focus as a torrential downpour of agony and shame wrapped him in a suffocating tight cocoon, safe as it was in its normality. Safe that it remained the same. So soft was the feeling, so harsh and demanding the friction, Naruto began to lose himself to routine. He rested his forehead against the floor and let himself be rocked. Back and forth, back and forth, it hurt but he knew it so well that it didn't really hurt anymore--_

_The carpet was so soft under the flushed skin of his face and he felt his bound hand reach up to stroke its cheek, feeling eyelashes flutter against his fingertips, and he smiled when a sweaty, but warm, hand cupped the back of his and pressed it more firmly against a pale face._

_He opened his eyes, smiled up into dark ones that met his with so much understanding, so very full of the acceptance he'd missed for all of his life and now it was shoved in front of his eyes like a vast feast before a starved man. He drank in those eyes, the tilt of the lips that told him the smile was exclusively for his gaze, for him, only him._

_As they moved, hips rising and falling in an uneven pattern but was so perfect in imperfection, as their lips crashed with the subtly and gentleness of a gentle wave in a bay, Naruto whispered his name. And his was whispered back._

_No._

_It was __**shouted **__back._

"Naruto!"

His veins were instantly alight with liquid electricity and his back flew up from the bed, neck snapping with the action, his forehead nearly colliding with Sasuke's in the process. His roommate dodged backwards, arching his chest so as to allow his one knee to remain on the bed, hands gripping the mattress to keep himself steady. Naruto fought to steady both his gaze and his breathing, eyes trained on Sasuke, not allowing the boy out of his sight.

There were dreams, Naruto knew, that faded from his memory an hour after waking. There were some he couldn't remember at all, even upon the moment his eyes opened in the morning. Than there were those dreams, more likely than not nightmares, that stuck with him for days, if not weeks. He had a sneaking suspicion that this would be one of them. But what depressed him more wasn't the idea of a new memory to torment him, but the idea that he couldn't categorize it as either a dream or a nightmare.

Drawing his thoughts away from the matter for a moment, he focused on the concerned glint in onyx eyes, the odd tilt to the man's head, and the fact that their faces were all of a foot apart.

And that he was shirtless.

Naruto was sweating. Was he sweating from fear, or was he sweating because he was currently wearing a hoodie, heavy sweatpants and thick socks?

Nevertheless, he narrowed his eyes into a sharp glare and snapped, "Get the hell off of my bed."

Sasuke ignored him. He even crept forward another inch or so, inky stare warming his blood and making his muscles feel stiff. Naruto felt the strong urge to stretch, to release the mounting pressure that swallowed his entire body, but at the same time he felt frozen in place.

"What was that?" Sasuke muttered, voice gritty from lack of use, deep and resounding, the voice of many years ago only a bit older, more rich, like aged wine. "A fit? Or did you have a nightmare?"

Naruto swallowed, and it hurt. He needed a glass of water, anything to get the sudden and awful taste out of his mouth. It was like he swallowed a clot of chalk dust and it had settled in one large clump at the back of his throat.

_"How about a drink? I can get you a drink, if you wish."_

_"Y-yeah… thanks."_

"It's none of your business!" Naruto meant for his words to sound strong and firm, but like a sharp hook to his jaw a fresh memory slammed its way into his mind, and it took every ounce of will power to keep their gazes locked without remembering.

"It was a dream, right?" Sasuke pressed, leaning closer, and a dozen escape plans popped into Naruto's head, each and every one of them as useless and pathetic as the next. "I heard your murmuring in your sleep."

A sudden idea popped into his head, and an uncharacteristic sneer spread across Naruto's lips. "Actually, Uchiha, yeah, it was a dream. A nightmare, actually." His smirk grew. "Wanna hear about it? You might remember a part or two."

_Parts, only parts, the first part, the first was a memory, the second was a dream, that was the nightmare, __**that **__was the nightmare…_

Sasuke froze and, slowly, expressionless face never twitching to betray an emotion, he began to lean back until he was standing on his feet. He wore only sweat pants, Naruto noted, his feet bare a stark contrast to the navy color of the floor.

"No, I don't," Sasuke told him. "I've never been one for fiction."

Naruto's jaw dropped, and he watched in mute silence as Sasuke turned around, walked to his bed to pick up a neatly folded towel and pair of slacks, and then make his way to the door to their shared bathroom.

"I'm showering," Sasuke informed him, one hand on the doorknob. "You should feel better with your rapist out of the room, right?" Naruto was silent, and Sasuke waited for a long moment, appearing to expect some sort of reaction. When he got none, he snorted, and Naruto felt another corner of his mind crack and cripple in on itself. He'd just woken up, but he suddenly felt so tired. After jolting awake so quickly, it felt like his consciousness was receding just as fast.

"How can you make a joke out of this?" Naruto hissed, leaning forward so that he knelt on the bed. "It isn't something you should fuck around with!"

And Sasuke turned around. A moment later, those powerful eyes were boring into his once more and Naruto wished himself anywhere else right now. He wished it even harder at the next words out of Sasuke's mouth.

"You're right," Sasuke told him. Disappointment, thick as cold molasses, fermented the icy words and they struck Naruto's chest like a rusty dagger, his stomach plunging down somewhere below his abdomen, weighed down by an anvil of guilt. "It isn't something you should make a mockery of."

**Click**

Naruto didn't even see Sasuke retreat back into the bathroom until he was, once again, alone in the room, staring dumbly at the closed door. He sat there in silence for a while, the only movement he made being when he slowly sat back down, legs slowly crossing before him Indian-silence. A minute later, he heard the spray of the showerhead. Almost simultaneously, he heard a shrill ringing coming from somewhere by his bed. He listened to it for a few moments before jerking to life, the last remains of a tormenting dream and betrayed eyes flitting quickly from his mind in order to make room for _Iruka, Iruka, shit, I forgot to call Iruka he's going to kill me…_

After wrestling with the tangled pair of jeans that slumped in a shapeless jump on the floor, he twisted his wrist and retrieved his cell phone which continued to ring and vibrate in his palm. 'IRUKA" flashed across the LSD screen in bold, accusing letters and, after swallowing back the thick surge of guilt, he flipped it open and pressed it against his ear.

"Hello?"

_**"Hi."**_

__Naruto winced and habit made him scratch at the back of his head with his free hand, a sheepish smile unconsciously crossing his lips. Keeping on ear open to the sound of water that continued to trickle from the shower not too far from his bed, he said, "Hey Iruka." He heard a sharp intake of breath and, before Iruka could get one more word in edgewise, Naruto was blurting out whatever lie came into his mind first. "Sorry, Iruka. I know I promised to call, but I was dead tired, and as soon as I got to the hotel I collapsed. I would've called you in the car, but you're always telling me you'll rip off my ears if I talk on a cell in the car--"

_"Wait--you stayed in the hotel for the night?"_

_At least he isn't doing the whisper thing, _Naruto thought before remembering that he had a story to tell. "Yeah. There was a big back up on the turnpike; they had fifteen miles of bumper-to-bumper parking, I swear. By the time I got through it I just pulled off the nearest exit and crashed at the hotel. I didn't wanna fall asleep while going seventy, heh."

Whatever was in his tone, Iruka seemed to buy it. There was a long pause, and then a resentful, _"You could have at least called before you went to bed."_

"I know, I know, I'm sorry!" Naruto rushed, smelling an easy victory. "I'll call next time, I swear."

A sigh crackled like white noise for a second. _"Yeah, yeah. Did you have enough to pay for the room?"_

"Yeah, I paid sixty in cash." Naruto relaxed his back and leaned against the wall, settling himself in for a long conversation.

_"What time are you leaving for the university?"_

Naruto debated in his head quickly, and, deciding to skip the further complications of making up a time and going through imaginary directions, he said, "I left two hours ago, actually. I was only forty minutes away. I've got my room and everything, Iruka, you should see it--"

_"Wait, you left two hours ago?"_

"Yeah?"

_"…you left at five in the morning?"_

Blinking, Naruto drew his phone back and tapped a random key to illuminate the screen. What time had Sasuke woken him up, anyway?

**7:14**

_Fucker._

"Heh, yeah, well…. I was supposed to get there yesterday, and I was kinda excited."

_"But I've never seen you voluntarily wake up so early for anything… you'd oversleep the day of your own funeral."_

"Iruka," Naruto groaned, tilting his head back and cupping his neck with a clammy palm, rubbing the skin that was, for some reason, cold. "It's _med _school. You know it's important to me."

Iruka chuckled. _"I know," _he said, and Naruto zoned in on the twinge of pride he heard in that voice. He soaked it up, held the exact tone, and replayed the words in his head a few times, the line falling into a comfortable silence. That was when Naruto realized why his skin was crawling.

He couldn't hear running water.

Just as Naruto was beginning to panic, Iruka said genially, _"So, have you met your roommate yet? You said you had a double-suite."_

_No one can finish a shower that quickly. Maybe he forgot his shampoo on the sink or something. Maybe he's just climbing out to get it._

The door creaked open.

_Or maybe my luck really is as bad as I thought it was._

_"Naruto?"_

Sasuke was exiting the bathroom slowly, lingering beneath the threshold, one hand holding the knot of the towel that was twisted around his waist. His chest was pale and dripping with the water from his quick shower, his hair plastered to his scalp and beginning to stick up at the back, bangs hung over his eye until an impatient hand reached to sweep them away. It missed one single lock, the strand so small Sasuke probably didn't even notice it, and it made the fingers of Naruto's hand itch.

_"Naruto?"_

Naruto started. "Sorry, Iruka," he apologized. "He just walked in." And then he winced at the slip of tongue. _Oops._

_"So you've met him?" _Iruka said, sounding cheerful. "_What's he like? Are you two getting along?"_

Naruto sighed again, breath rattling the reception. He could make up a character easily enough, he knew. He also knew that Iruka would undoubtedly be here in a few week's time with the last of the things he'd forgotten at home, and would have the full intentions of meeting the person Naruto described to him now.

_Well, _Naruto thought, _it's not like they aren't going to meet sooner or later anyway. And Iruka probably wouldn't remember him anyway._

"We're getting along all right," Naruto said cautiously. "He's a bit quiet."

Iruka snorted. _"Good. I hope he rubs off on you. What's his name?"_

_Can't make up a name, either, damnit, Iruka. _"Sasuke." The aforementioned man cocked his head to the side. Naruto glared at him from the bed, and Sasuke shrugged, crossing the room to his dresser and shuffling through the contents, throwing out clothes onto his neatly made bed.

_"Sasuke?" _Iruka repeated, sounding surprised. _"Uchiha? Sasuke Uchiha?"_

"You remember him!?"

_"Yeah, of course I do! He's your friend from middle school, isn't he? The one you wouldn't shut up about?"_

Naruto sputtered indignantly before hissing, "He isn't my '_friend_', Iruka."

Sasuke was looking oddly at him, but this time, when Naruto glared at him, he refused to look away. He fixed Naruto with a bland stare, one hip leaning against the side table only a few feet from him. Naruto could smell the soap wafting from his skin.

Iruka, to Naruto's great dismay, was laughing at him. _"Sure he's not. Which is why you two were all over each other in school."_

"_We were not all over each other!_" Naruto practically screamed, the grip he had on his mobile making his knuckles go bone white. His face was burning. Sasuke was still watching him.

_"You were," _Iruka insisted. _"I've never seen two people so in-tuned with each other. Where one of you was, the other would be there in five minutes. It was kind of funny."_

"We weren't in-tune or whatever," Naruto snapped. "I fucking hated him. I still do."

"_Naruto!" _Iruka said sharply. _"I hope you didn't say that while he was in the room." _Sasuke was standing up straight now. Perhaps it was the height difference cause by the two different positions, but he seemed a little closer, too.

"No, he just left, actually," Naruto said, eyes narrowing in warning, in pleading for Sasuke to do just that. To leave. To the bathroom, to the common area, to the school ground, to a different continent…

Sasuke murmured, "Iruka remembers me?"

Naruto shook his head, lips pulled taught in a thin line, listening as Iruka rattled on about some story of the two of them in middle school. He wasn't catching too much of it, too focused on the fact that Sasuke was walking too close to him for comfort. He stopped when his knees were brushing the mattress. And then, to Naruto's horror, he climbed on top of the bed.

Naruto cupped a hand over the bottom half of his cell. "What the fuck do you think you're doing? Get off!"

Sasuke wasn't listening, and Iruka was calling his name again. "Yeah, Iruka," he said in a manageably calm tone. "I'm here. Sorry. My books are falling off my bed, I was just trying to catch them." He lifted a hand to thrust against Sasuke's chest in an attempt to push him off. His hand retreated a fraction of a second later. Sasuke's skin was still wet from the shower, and it was warm. Too warm, too real, and too reminiscent of--

--_pressed his hand damply over his chest, listening to the thudding heart, thinking, _wouldn't it be nice to stay until he wakes up, _gets up and gets dressed with half a conscious, half a heart, half of everything, leaving his other half sleeping soundly on his floor while he walked away, shutting the door behind him--_

--things he didn't care to remember. Naruto considered punching Sasuke with his free hand, but before he could that hand was trapped by a pale hand, pressed into the mattress by his wrist with a gentle, but forceful pressure. Sasuke rubbed the vein of his wrist with a calloused thumb, and cocked his head to the side, awaiting a violent reaction, eyes knowing and curious, face mingled and warped with that damn emotion, the feeling that Naruto still couldn't name.

"I'm here, Iruka," Naruto repeated, leaning back as far as he could. Sasuke leaned in further, one leg swinging over to straddle his lap, and Naruto just knew that that towel was five seconds from falling and he could see a faint trace of black hairs travel from his belly button to dip below the band of the towel, his shoulders had filled out and so had his chest, his arms, had other parts of him--

_"Are you all right? What's wrong?"_

"N-nothing. I'm just trying to get dressed. My friend Kiba's outside the door, we're gonna go get breakfast together."

_"You… made a friend at seven in the morning."_

Naruto winced, and smelled mint. Mint and smoke, he was getting too close, this was a sick joke but it didn't feel sick, just playful and teasing and familiar as Sasuke's face loomed inches from his own, onyx eyes cold in their inky blackness but with a slightly warm expression.

He had to hang up now, whether it was to end this conversation before it grew to be even more irreparable or to free up his options to beat Sasuke within an inch of his life. He suspected it to be a bit of both.

"He's right across the hall from me." He's down a floor, but what's the difference? Naruto thought "He's gonna head to get breakfast with me. I'm sorry, Iruka, can I call you a bit later?"

_"Yeah, all right." _Naruto tried to squash down the guilt he felt at cutting his guardian short. This was made easier by the fact that Sasuke, sensing that the door was closing on his chances, had moved in even closer, face brushing his chin as it dipped down to his neck, free hand reaching for his hip, fingertips searching for skin as they dipped underneath his hoodie. Naruto's arm was full of pins and needles, refusing to move, not even to swat at the questing hand. It was pathetic, it was a bit sad, and if that towel dropped just one more centimeter--

_**Why am I thinking this?**_

__Gritting his teeth, Naruto shoved Sasuke away with a hand pressed against his clavicle. The Japanese man grunted, but relented, scooting back with an annoyed look on his face. Naruto didn't look down. He knew the towel had fallen off. He didn't want to look.

As Sasuke began to climb off the bed (leaving his towel, Naruto noted with vague panic, on the mattress) Naruto said, "I'll call around noon, all right? I have to get all my books for my classes."

_"I'll talk to you later, then," _Iruka said, sounding slightly more cheerful. _"Oh, and Naruto?"_

"Yeah?" Naruto was tracking Sasuke's movements out of the corner of his eye, the rest of his sight filled by the innocent white towel draped over his bed.

_"I'm proud of you."_

Naruto froze. Every now and then, the person he knew better than anyone else, and who knew _him _better than anyone else--_kissing Sasuke was like swallowing ash_--said something that threw him completely off-guard. This was one of those times and, after a pregnant pause, he said in a much warmer tone, "Call ya later, Iruka."

_"Good-bye, Naruto." _The line went dead.

And then his eyes came alive with a fiery anger that would peel paint. His teeth, and he heard a deep rumble like a stuttering engine. He was growling.

Sasuke looked up with minimal interest, one arm in the short-sleeved shirt he had in his hands. "What?" he asked coolly.

Naruto snapped.

--

Really, Kiba didn't know what he was thinking on his way up from his room to Naruto's. He'd just finished his morning jog (with Sasuke, of all people, who he'd met on the track) and had taken a quick shower to rinse the sweat off of his skin. Sasuke had mentioned getting breakfast after this, and had promised to wake Naruto up and ask if he wanted to go.

"Are you two cool now?" Kiba asked as they walked back to the dorm building.

"Yes, we're fine," Sasuke had said. "Just a small misunderstanding."

It didn't seem that small to Kiba, but he let it slide, watching Sasuke's back as he retreated back up the steps to his and Naruto's shared room. And now, he stood outside that room, once again wondering what he'd really been expecting as he listened to the sounds of heavy breathing, of things being knocked over and probably broken, of grunts and yelps of pain. For a moment, he stood outside the door, wondering if he should interfere. Then his mind tracked back to earlier that morning, when Sasuke had looked him in the eye and told him it was all just a small misunderstanding.

Sasuke didn't strike Kiba as a liar, and Kiba thought of himself as a fairly good judge of character. Even Shino had told him last night that he'd never known Sasuke to lie needlessly before. That aside, Sasuke and Naruto didn't seem to be too hostile towards each other. Sure, Naruto was quick enough to punch the other man, but he seemed constantly on the verge of apologizing for it. Sasuke seemed to be much on the same page, but with a look in his eyes that said he wanted something Kiba didn't want to think on too much.

"Ouch! You under-handed fucker, I'll kill you!"

"Hn!"

Kiba sighed, dawdled for a few seconds, thought of what he would be thinking in Naruto's position. Deciding, he abandoned the door and went back down to his own dorm, thinking along the way that he could always drag Shino down to the cafeteria if he was so desperate for company.

--

"Argh, let me up!"

"No."

"LET ME **UP**!"

"No. Not until you promise me that you'll regain that minute semblance of sanity that I know you have somewhere in that pea-sized brain of yours."

"Bastard!"

Sasuke had Naruto pinned to the floor in a manner that was entirely too familiar. Naruto could sense that Sasuke knew it too, and it only made him angrier that Sasuke merely tightened the grip he had on his roommate's wrists. His elbows flapped uselessly against the floor, and he made his first and last attempt to buck the man off; the collision of hips against hips was too intimate to make a useless bid for freedom.

"What do you _want _from me?" Naruto finally snapped, although he was none too sure he wanted the answer.

Sasuke frowned. His legs shifted so that his thighs were more comfortably suited along the insides of Naruto's legs before asking, "Iruka remembers me?"

"Obviously, weren't you listening?"

"Have you told him the same fantasy you've been telling me?"

"Fantasy?" Naruto echoed, confused for a moment before catching on angrily. "Why the fuck would I fantasize--"

Sasuke snorted. "Shut up," he ordered, and Naruto found his lips automatically sealing shut, and his eyes drawn to Sasuke's mouth. If he closed his eyes now, Naruto realized, he would be able to remember the taste. Just looking made him remember the feel, the unadulterated hunger that had torn him to pieces and then ravaged the shredded remains.

"I'll let you up if you answer for me one thing."

"I don't know where you left your brain, fucktard. Probably in the playroom in kindergarten."

Sasuke silenced him with another glare. "Truthfully."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "What?"

Mid-eye roll, Sasuke gripped his wrists tighter and then brought them up above his head. "Hey!" Pinning them with one hand, Sasuke used his free hand to cup Naruto's cheek. Naruto twisted his face away, but the hand was persistent, pressing hard enough o bruise. When Naruto's face was as hard pressed into the carpet as he could make it, Sasuke relented the pressure and began to trace one of the long, thin lines on his face with a careful thumb.

"These aren't tattoos," Sasuke muttered, eyes transfixed on the scars while Naruto's remained on him. "Tell me how you got them."

Naruto couldn't tell what annoyed him more; that it was more of a command than a question, or that Sasuke was continuing to force the whole… ordeal into a more consensual light. "I got them after you knocked me the fuck out."

Sasuke scowled. "Knocked you out?"

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Knocked out, passed out, there's no difference."

"There's a big difference."

"You carved them into my face with a butcher knife."

"I never owned a butcher knife."

"You did! Or a steak knife, some kind of knife--"

"Look at you, you can't even keep one simple part of a story straight."

"You carved them into my fucking face while I _slept_!"

"I thought you were passed out. You'd make a shitty novelist."

"Shut up, shut your fucking face!"

They were talking over each other and even though Naruto knew he had the louder voice, but he could still feel himself being drowned out. It was growing more and more disturbing how it seemed like Sasuke was really believing his own story, how it was becoming more of an actual insanity than a cruel joke. It tilted Naruto off kilter, and like many years, ago, his reactions slowed and he didn't know what to do anymore.

Sasuke waited a few moments for his captive to calm down before asking, "Did they catch the people who did this to you?" He was stroking his cheek again with warm fingers, and Naruto was too prideful to shrink back again. "Or did you do it yourself, just to make your ludicrous tale more real?"

The tension threatened to snap his whole being in two. "I don't know what the hell happened to make _him _such a fucked-up dick, but _he _is currently straddling me when he _belongs _in the farthest mental institution from this spot."

They were both silent as they glared at each other. Naruto could feel his arms going numb, so before the pins and needles could settle in, he yanked them sharply twice. Sasuke gave in and let go, but he didn't get off of his hips. Naruto made no move to shove him off, although his eyes made it clear that he'd do much worse if Sasuke tried another move. He remembered the scene on the bed, and his body tensed.

"Did you give those scars to yourself?" Sasuke murmured. "Never mind who did them. I just want to know… was it you?"

Naruto glared, and, slowly pronouncing each syllable, he grit out, "You. Should. Know."

Sasuke remained above him for a few moments before disappointment set in. "Ch," he snorted, finally rocking back on his heels and standing. "Whatever, dobe." He offered a hand up, which Naruto didn't take. The blond man shuffled to his feet on his own, retreating back a few feet under an incredulous, mystifying watch.

"I'm going to go get breakfast."

"Good. Get out."

His jaw clenched, frustration clear in his eyes, but Sasuke didn't make another retaliation. Instead, he swept from the room without so much another word, leaving Naruto to stand there and stare at the door with open anguish written all over his face, confusion and stress making his shoulders drop, and confusing guilt making the contents of his stomach boil. Just like it did the next day, and the next, and the next week. Even after classes started and soaked up his time, his attention, just like his dreams did when their haunting memories, and the unremembered flaws in them, saturated with warmth and a longed-for familiarity, and they stuck to each other disjointedly like pieces from different puzzles.

That emotion, the power of that feeling, in dark gray eyes haunted him in every mirror, in every flashcard he read from. Memories, both familiar and foreign, were tucked into every corner of every room Naruto was unfortunate enough to stumble into. Every new person he met, every new friend he made, fit with him just as poorly as his memories did.

Because he still felt like his other half was off sleeping, deeply buried in an apartment some many miles away, stained with his blood.

--

When Naruto entered the room one evening two weeks later, satchel swinging and _thunk_ing against his hip with every step, he found Sasuke to already be there. It had become a routine. Neither greeted each other, although Sasuke would glance up at him for a flash of a moment upon his arrival before going back to whatever he was doing. It was an uncomfortably comfortable set-up, a mutually agreed-upon, unspoken armistice. He sat cross-legged on the bed, reading notes printed in tiny, cramped handwriting, one hand flipping them forwards to backwards, the other digging at one looked like a deep red rock to his side, plucking up small seeds that Naruto could only compare to small, ruby kernels of corn. As Naruto crossed silently to his desk, he saw, out of the side of his eye, Sasuke spit with sickeningly perfect accuracy three white, bare seeds back onto the plate.

As the blond set up his laptop, he felt curiosity begin to gnaw at him. He was a simple (ha) man and when he thought of a simple question, such as, What the fuck are you eating? his mind ordered him to simply ask. He was able to defend himself against the powerful urge for all of ten minutes, but finally, the gentle click and tap the seeds made against the plate drove his restraint to snap cleanly in half.

"Whatreyoueating?" he asked, the words sounding nowhere near English or any other knowledge Naruto could care to remember. They were spoken in a low pitch, but any wild hopes that Sasuke had mistaken it for a bizarre cough were dashed when obsidian eyes flashed to his, hand halting half-way to the plate.

"What?" he asked, cocking an eyebrow and frowning slightly.

Naruto scowled. "You don't have to be so rude."

"And you don't have to speak to me in gibberish; I speak English just fine now." A beat. "And I wasn't rude. I'm asking what you want."

Gulping against the half-formed words, Never mind, Naruto repeated himself, more slowly. "I asked what you're eating. Bastard," he tagged on the last word in case _he _didn't sound quite rude enough.

Sasuke picked up the half-eaten rock thing and tilted it in Naruto's direction, showing him the inside of it. He saw what looked like split-open pods, all framed and separated by a spongy, off-white web. Tiny scarlet seeds clumped along the walls of it, glittering like tiny rubies.

"It's a Chinese apple," (1) Sasuke explained. He thrust the fruit slightly towards his roommate. "Did you want to try it?"

Yes. "No, I'm good."

Sasuke snorted. "I--it won't bite you."

_It's not the fruit I'm worried about, asshole. _"I'm good," he repeated. "You can keep your nasty fruit thing to yourself."

"Just try it, you coward. It won't hurt." He thrust the thing towards him again before gently tossing it. Naruto caught it in one hand, holding it gingerly as if it were a grenade. Sasuke sighed. "It isn't poisoned, either."

Naruto frowned suspiciously. "It looks bitter. Is it?"

"How can something _look _bitter? Just try it, idiot."

Rolling his eyes, Naruto dug out three of the crimson seeds, noticing a tiny pin drop of burgundy juice had pearled on his finger.

"Don't let it get on the bed sheets," Sasuke warned him, putting down his flashcards in favor of propping an elbow on his knees and resting his chin on an upturned palm, smirking slightly. "The stain will never come out."

With just one more moment of hesitation, Naruto popped them into his mouth. He swirled them around his tongue for a moment, not tasting anything, until he gingerly bit into one. It burst inside his mouth, and the blond was reminded of the taste of cranberries, Nowhere near as tart, much sweeter, but the two clicked nonetheless.

"It's good," Naruto admitted, throwing the apple back towards Sasuke before spitting the seeds into the trashcan by his feet, noting with vague satisfaction that they all made their target. "I didn't peg you as someone who liked sweet stuff, though."

Sasuke shrugged, plucking a single seed from the inside and popping it into his mouth. "I don't," he agreed. "But I like these."

"And orange soda," Naruto added, then winced. Had he really just said that? Hadn't they made a silent agreement, him especially, to not so much allude to it?

But Sauske's smirk merely grew, and Naruto bit back a groan. "Yes," he practically purred. "And orange soda."

Naruto went back to ignoring him, pulling up the web browser on his now-powered laptop. The room was silent for the next half hour save for the clicking of computer keys, the gentle dry sounds of flash cards being flipped from their stack, and the occasional _pit _as another seed core hit the plate. When the small clock on Naruto's desk read 1:31, he heard Sasuke move behind him. The raven had a class at two, he knew, from weeks of careful observation.

Naruto ignored him as he slid on his shoes and put the rest of his snack into to the mini-fridge by his bed. He continued to stare at the screen, not at the black text but the clear reflection of the other on the screen. He disappeared from the reflection's view, and Naruto didn't move when he felt the presence of another directly behind him; too frozen to move an inch, the earlier bout of light-heartedness gone and replaced with sickeningly cold dread.

_Pat_

Naruto blinked at it, half an ear listening to the door as it clicked shut behind Sasuke, full gaze locked on the small section of Chinese apple the raven had placed on his desk.

--

And so it went on for weeks, and those weeks melded together until the leaves turned color and fall began to set in. The calm, clear surface of his mind was constantly reflecting new light and churning into small tendrils as his psyche was bounced back and forth, each new memory, each new _dream_, like tiny rain drops that nevertheless created expansive ripples.

Iruka had visited once a month back, a time in which Sasuke conveniently chose to be absent. He'd given him the grand tour, introduced him to Kiba, Shino, Shikamaru, Sakura, Lee, every person he could label as a friend. Showed him where he took his classes, plastered a smile on his face, and prayed that it would be enough. And for now, it was.

_"Take care of yourself, all right?" _Iruka had ordered him when he was about to leave, with a look in his eyes that said, "You aren't fooling me." The hug he gave Naruto before he climbed into his car told him there was an open ear, and the way he hesitated to close the door told Naruto that he could give up and would never be looked down upon for it. That whatever was bothering him was important, and if he wanted to forget about it, all he had to do was climb into the car, too, and he'd be going home.

But he couldn't. Every day was a constant battle to do that. It was his fear and cowardice versus his unprecedented pride and inferiority complex that was larger than the West coast. He couldn't leave, not when someone important, even if it was the bad sort, continued to look down at him with pity in their eyes, with such bitter disappointment Naruto was on the verge of breaking down and apologizing every second he was in the same room as him. Naruto didn't wake up to hear Sasuke crying again, but with the way things were going, he would've rather slept through the sounds of muffled sobbing than the horrible, empty silence. It was like he was in a graveyard; breaking the silence was a sin in itself, and no amount of sunlight or bright music could make the dorm room any less dismal.

And Naruto had another item to add to his list of reasons as to why he couldn't just throw in the towel and transfer to another school. He was beginning to think that, on some level, that he was being driven insane.

Seven years ago he was haunted by horrendous, livid nightmares every night, whenever he shut his eyes, for months. The same replaying of the same afternoon, over and over, and it was almost enough to make him sick. And sometimes it did make him sick, and he'd blnk his eyes and realize that he was hunched over the side of his bed, a pool of sick puddle on the floor, the curdling stench of it making his eyes run and the dream that much more real.

He could still feel his fingers. Every shadow on his skin looked like a finger-shaped bruise. His injuries were mostly healed after the first month, the lacerations on his cheek angry red scars, still slightly puffy from their freshness, and it hurt to look at himself so much that he started to take his showers and brush his teeth in the dark. During his first year of having the scars he wore cover-up, just to make them lighter, but he could feel them with every facial expression he made, every sharp object he saw made his cheeks tingle.

Sometimes _that _made him sick, too.

And he was _denying _it.

The thought made him sick almost every morning for the first two or three weeks on campus. Now it became a constant, throbbing ache that no amount of asprin could help.

Naruto stood in line at the school store now, hands curled up in the pockets of his windbreaker, bouncing on his heels slightly in his impatience. His professor had informed him that the book they all had was outdated as of this summer, and that new versions had been deliver to the school store over the weekend. When he reached the register ans inquired about it, he got a wince. Never a good sign.

"We must've gotten dozens of requests for that book since yesterday," the teller told him. "I'm sorry, but we only got a small shipment of them two days ago and we're sold out."

Naruto sighed. He was having all sorts of good luck at this school. "Do you know when you'll be getting more in?"

"We're putting an order in for more to come in with the next shipment. Would you like me to add your name onto the list?"

"Yeah, please…"

A few minutes later, after Naruto had purchased a bottle of Coke (he refused to leave a fifteen-minute line empty-handed), he was heading out and into the brisk wind. It was Sunday, and a lot of people had left the campus to head home for the weekend. Naruto sighed, watching a sponge of vapor dwindle in the air before dissipating into nothing. Sasuke never left for weekends, so going back to the dorm was out of the question. His friends were either gone or were studying, which left him with another boring trip to the library.

_Might as well get my ethics paper done, _Naruto thought blandly, shuffling off in the opposite direction of his dorm building and towards the library. He found himself doing this a lot, trips to the library. There was nothing wrong with working with his laptop. That is, if Sasuke counted as nothing.

He'd been unconsciously walking towards the dorm when he decided to go to the library, and it was when he passed by the doors to the school store that he saw an odd sight. A man was leaning against the building by the door, a book opened in one hand from which he was reading, the other hand with another book, this one shut and being held out to him.

Cocking an eyebrow, Naruto stepped forward cautiously. The man made a waving motion with the book.

"Take it," he said, not looking up from the book in his hand. "They make me buy a new one every time they come out with a new edition, but I never use it. Take it," he repeated. And Naruto did, holding the heavy book in his hand for a moment before slowly sliding it into his shoulder bag.

"You don't mind?"

"Obviously not," he muttered. "I have no use for it. Instincts are better."

The corner of his mouth twitched. A doctor who didn't go by the book? He must be a professor, then.

And he looked like one, too. He was dressed in a business suit with a laptop case slung over his shoulder. He looked to be in his early forties with graying hair. The only thing off about him, besides his flippancy for code apparently, was the eye patch he wore over his left eye, and the fact that the book he was reading appeared to be porn.

"You're a professor here?" Naruto asked.

The man hummed in response. "And you, too?"

"Err, no, I'm a student."

"Ah. So you are."

He didn't say anything else, seeming to be completely at ease to pay Naruto the barest minimum of attention while the blond-haired man hung in awkward silence.

"So, erm, what subject do you teach?" Naruto asked, feeling the need to fill the silence. He twisted open the cap on the bottle of soda and took a long swig of Coke to clear the dryness in his throat.

"Psychology."

"Psych, huh? I took a few courses in it during my undergrad years."

"Did you," Kakashi muttered, looking more absorbed in his book than he was in their shared conversation.

"Yeah. But I didn't know they taught Psych in med school, though."

"Most majors require it," Kakashi informed him. "Just wait. You'll probably have a class with me, or with Professor Phillips, sooner or later. Probably in your second semester if you don't have it now."

Naruto nodded, at a loss of what else to say. This man had just saved him over a hundred dollars. He felt like he should do something. Buy him coffee. Provide a decent conversation. But all Kakashi seemed to want to do was read the most awkward book in the most awkward place.

He was just constructing an excuse to get him away without seeming too obnoxious when a thought entered his head.

_"It's the most complicated form of Photoshop anyone could possibly imagine."_

_I wonder… if…_

_…does that go for memory, too?_

"Professor K--"

"'Kakashi' is fine."

"Ah… 'kay. Um, Kakashi, something's been bugging me for a bit and you'd probably be able to answer it."

"Don't assume, Naruto. It makes an ass out of you and me."

"That's why I said 'probably'!" Naruto barked, grinning. Kakashi's one visible eye crinkled in mirth. "And how did you know my name?"

"How did I know you needed that book?"

"You're psychic?"

He was definitely smiling now. "I heard it in the store."

"Oh. Whatever. Anyway, I had some questions about memory."

"What about it?"

"Well… how easily can it be reconstructed? Especially about something… really important. And I don't mean a little detail or two, I mean the whole damned thing. Can you remember an event completely different after, I dunno, a decade or so?"

"Memory, hm?" Kakashi flipped the page in his book, although his one good eye didn't seem to be taking in any of the words anymore; it remained stationary in its socket. "Let me ask you this, then. Where were you nine-eleven?"

"Nine-eleven? With the twin towers?"

"Yes. Where were you, what were you doing--who were you doing--what were you eating, that sort of thing."

Naruto blushed a bit at the 'who' comment, but said anyway, "I was in school that day, during study hall. We were watching a nature documentary in my science class when the loudspeaker came on telling us that we were going home early. Everyone was… really happy. I didn't find out what happened until I got home and Iruka told me."

Kakashi nodded. "Yes. That memory is pretty vivid, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is."

"Do you know what it's called?"

Naruto thought for a moment. "Flashbulb memory," he said after a moment's hesitation. "When shock makes you recall everything in a memory?"

"Right again. Want to know something else?" Kakashi grinned, eye twinkling in mirth. "That story you just told me? It's complete and total bull shit."

"What?" Naruto snarled. "No it's not! I remember everything about that--that day. Everyone does."

"No, everyone does not. And if you'll shut up, I'll tell you why." Naruto's teeth clicked as his mouth slammed shut. "Good boy." Blue eyes narrowed into a glare, but he remained silent.

"A month or so after September 11th, 2001," Kakashi said, now flipping his book shut and tucking it into the leather laptop case he carried over his shoulder, "researchers embarked on a slightly unethical study of memory. More specifically, flashbulb memory. As you and most people would think, 9-11 was a very life-altering event in a person's life. You would assume that a person could remember, in exact detail, the events of that day.

(2)"The researchers wanted to test that theory. They brought a wide, random selection of people of different ages, races, and genders into the lab, sat them down, and had them write down the events of that day as specifically as possible. The researchers prompted them to list obvious things such as location, what they ate, the company they were in, but also small things, like how they wore their hair that day, what clothes they were wearing, what the weather was like, if they were worried or happy about anything at the time. After all, if flashbulb memory worked, they should be able to remember it all.

"And they did. Each person gave a very detailed personal recollection of the day, and were sent home. Four years later, just four years, they were brought back in and asked, once again, to give a recount of the event. They were prompted to answer the same exact questions based on what they wrote down in 2001. The answers were then compared, and do you know what happened?"

"They were right, I'm guessing."

"No. The answers, all of their answers, could not have been more off chart. If a man was coming in from a walk with his dog to see the news on in his house in 2001, he remembers attending his great aunt's birthday party in 2005. When the experimenters gave the people back their answers from both 2005 and 2001, what do you think they did?"

Knowing he'd be wrong but feeling it would be stupid not to say anything, Naruto replied, "Realized that they were wrong?"

Kakashi's grin grew wider. "No. They got angry, offended even. How, they asked, could I possibly not remember? It's my memory, not yours. That was one of the most horrific moments in United States history, how dare you come to my doorstep and tell me I made it all up? They called the researchers liars, con-artists, anything to displace the idea that they were wrong. They remembered the events strongly in their minds, and I have no doubt in my mind that they truly believe in what they remember. But solid proof remains that they were _wrong_, very, very wrong."

"Why?" Naruto murmured, disbelief coloring his tone and his face. "How could someone forget like that?"

Kakashi sighed, smile slipping from his face. "Because, Naruto, as much as we'd like to think that it will stay with us forever, memory decays. No, perhaps 'decay' is the wrong word. Memory cannot decay. More like… if the conscious is a lake, then what's above the water is what you can consciously remember, and what's below the water is the long-term memory. Little triggers can bring it back up to the surface, but you can't remember it by just wanting to. Trying to recall a particularly monumental event in life puts so much strain on the brain that it begins to make things up, just to put itself at ease. One day, if we should ever witness the election of a black or female president, people will remember where they were and what they were doing a week later to the T. In ten years, however…" Kakashi shrugged.

He trailed off when he noticed Naruto wasn't really look him in the eye anymore. He was boring holes into the ground at his feet, shoulders shaking slightly, fists clenched. Curious, but not enough to question it, Kakashi patted him on the shoulder. "Best not to think too much of it while you're sober," he advised. "It's too depressing. This is a conversation best held an hour or two into a bar visit." That made Naruto's mouth crinkle into a slight smile, and Kakashi grinned back. "We'll discuss it more in class. Make sure you take my class and I'll try and slip the 9-11 case study in somewhere."

Naruto's response was to grin a bit wider, and with a nod and a flippant, "See ya," Kakashi was gone, once again digging into his bag for his book, burying his nose in its pages.

And like a soldier who'd taken a bullet to the heart, the smile dropped from Naruto's face in the blink of an eye, worry dragging his face down and a horrible, empty ache in the pit of his stomach, squeezing him from the inside out and threatening to push him over the bring of insanity.

--

(1) Chinese Apple- another term for a pomegranate. If you don't get the connection, go to Google and type in "pomegranate", "Hades", and "Persephone", and see what you come up with.

(2) An actual experiment; I studied it in college. If anyone is interested, I can dig up the PDFs for the original case study and send them to you.

_Sorry for the long wait. I don't know whether I'll update this or _Teeth_ next. The next chapter of this story will be a bit short, followed by a much longer chapter, and then it'll be done._

_Comments, questions, or flaming bricks can be directed through review, e-mail, PM, or IM._

-_**Kodak**_


	4. Part 4

"_Just how deep do you believe?_

_Will you bite the hand that feeds?_

_Will you chew until it bleeds?_

_Can you get up off your knees?_

_Are you brave enough to see?_

_Do you want to change it?"_

-The Hand that Feeds, _Nine Inch Nails_

Starting from his early teens, Naruto had started to jump around with different hobbies. He began to race around his neighborhood on his bike at breakneck speed to practice for the triathlon, an interest he dropped after a quick three weeks. He began to read a lot, imagining being able to have his own personal library and being able to say that he'd read every book up there at least once. But he was more in love with the pride than with the books, and that idea, too, was thrown out the window. He decided to commit himself to his studies, to earn straight A's and have ivy league colleges banging on his door to beg him to accept admission. Then he'd cracked opened his seldom-touched chemistry textbook, glanced through it, and that idea created a resounding _thud _as the book hit the wall.

Amongst these hobbies were different kinds of arts. There was writing, there was painting, there was drawing, there was photography, and at one point, there was staining glass. When he first started learning, he'd bought a hundred-some dollars worth of paper paints, cheap glass photo frames, rolls of lead, and a shining new carpet cutter. When he pressed the glass over the paper design, and when he started rolling out strips of lead to trace the thick outlines of the picture below, he used the sharp edge of the carpet cutter to shape and mold the curve of the lead, and to cut off the edge at a straight angle. But, as he often was with many things, he'd been careless with the blade. He sometimes jerked the handle a little too hard, at the wrong angle, and often it rebounded, swinging back along the glass soundlessly and running along the tender line of skin attaching his finger with his fingernail, sliding it into a clean-cut angle of ruby red. Naruto didn't often notice the pain of it until blood began to pool around his finger, when fingertips began to leave dirty smudges of the darkest red over the glass, thicker and more beautiful than the paint he'd used.

For a few seconds after his initial discovery of the injury, shock served as a completely effective antibiotic to the pain that was far worse than a paper cut. It was like finding a Catholic priest at a grunge concert; he just did not expect it, and was half-convinced that he was seeing things. But the few seconds always passed, albeit slowly, and the pain set in. Than he was off to the bathroom, rinsing his finger off and looking for a bandage to stem the blood flow.

Those few seconds, the few moments of pure ignorance and outright disbelief, had somehow outdone themselves, and for Naruto Uzumaki, the seconds stretched to days, to weeks. But even then, those seconds, those weeks, had to give way at some point, and before Naruto realized what his mind was doing, before he could prepare for it, he completely forgot it all.

It happened one night at 1:04 in the morning. He'd gone to bed only an hour before, having been recently kicked out of the library at its closing time, his mid-term paper only half completed and the worry of its due date a constant nagging feeling on his mind. His dorm mate had been gone when he'd arrived, but this was nothing new. Sasuke had a knack for being absent upon Naruto's arrival, a constant mystery, but one that Naruto didn't go to any lengths to solve. Although this school had a considerably less amount of parties than his undergraduate college had, they were still there, just more muted and sane. Although Sasuke didn't seem like the socializing type, maybe he just liked the drinking. He could be having a beer with the neurology majors. He could be in the game room. He could be reading in some remote part of the campus. He could be staring at himself endlessly in the mirror. He could be anywhere, just not here, and for weeks, Naruto tried unsuccessfully to convince himself that this was a good thing.

It was Sasuke's arrival that woke Naruto up from his unconscious state, an arrival which Naruto distinctly noticed smelled alcohol-free. Sasuke went into the bathroom and returned five minutes later, naked saved for the boxers he wore, his dirty clothes a tangled bundle tucked under one arm. Naruto watched through cracked eyelids, through the dim light of the desk lamp Sasuke had switched on, as Sasuke lifted the lid of his laundry basket, threw the clothes in, flipped it shut and the light off. The sudden darkness was welcome to his eyes, which were starting to sting from a confusing pain, and the muffled sound of clothes over skin was loud and chaotic in the thick silence of the room. Sasuke tucked himself in the covers, turned so that he faced the wall, and was silent.

It was a simple fact: Sasuke knew that Naruto was awake. Naruto's breathing was too loud, too uneven, to pass as a believable lie.

And it was a horrible, deafening truth that Naruto could know this. But he read Sasuke's movements as easily as he read the movements of his own hand. Whether from fear or from curiosity, Naruto had spent his waking hours studying every single one of the older man's movements, deciphering every dip of his hand, every tilt of his head, every flick of his fingers, every step he took and every breath he breathed. And he saw the way Sasuke refused to even glance in the direction of Naruto's bed.

And Sasuke knew that Naruto was watching him. And Naruto knew that Sasuke didn't mind, that he'd even helped, opting to turn on the feeble lamp instead of the electric lights hanging above their heads, to save Naruto's eyes from the sudden onslaught of brightness that only fluorescent lighting could accomplish.

Within the dormitory, within the campus, within the world and within his mind, something was very wrong.

And that was when, at around 1:30 in the morning, Naruto completely forgot the very memory that had been haunting him for over eight years.

It was like missing a foot, or a hand. He knew where it should be, he knew what it felt like and how it felt when it touched something, but it _wasn't there_. He remembered it--the taste of Sasuke's mouth, the way he drove his hips, the feeling of the carpet, the smells, the noises, the _pain_, how it had felt horribly, disturbingly _good_--just like he remembered that Snape killed Dumbledore in the sixth Harry Potter book.

He couldn't remember.

His mind wouldn't let him.

Naruto knew, without any reasonable doubt, that he would no longer have nightmares. It would no longer play like a movie across a screen whenever he shut his eyes for too long. It was gone, only to be remembered if he tried too hard to think on it.

It was gone.

And it made him want to cry.

And then he looked at Sasuke's back, how it was too tense, how he was awake, too, and how he'd never bothered to notice if Sasuke slept well or not. He looked like a wolf, a beast, some kind of wild animal that had been gunned down and was now waiting for morning, to see if he'd be alive for the next sunrise.

Naruto wanted to go over to him, to put his arms around him and hold tight to whatever wound ailed to him, to step the blood flow like he'd stemmed the blood flow of his fingers years ago, to do whatever he could to make sure Sasuke would be alive, be whole, be there to feel the pain with him (_don't leave me alone _again) when the sunlight stole through the curtains.

Ridiculously enough, Naruto had the sudden image of Sasuke in a bright blue tailcoat and pants with gold fastenings, and himself in a frilly, princess-esque dress, and the thought made him laugh uncontrollably through his tears, the resulting sound a hybrid of unintelligible whimpers and heaves. It was loud, disturbing, and would wake Sasuke up.

But it didn't matter, because Sasuke wasn't sleeping anyway.

And now Naruto joined him, the two sharing another sleepless night together.

--

Naruto hadn't spoken to Shino since the day that they'd first met, months ago. Whenever Naruto stopped by to meet with Kiba, the stoic man remained quiet in the corner, reading from a book or pouring over a leather-bound portfolio, the motions of his eyes concealed by the subscription sunglasses that he wore.

"A bunch of newspaper clippings, I think," Kiba had told him when Naruto inquired as to what was in the book. "Shino used to go to some school out west for criminal justice before he switched here. I think they're a bunch of stories on crime cases or something."

"Criminal justice to medicine?" Naruto had asked. "That's a bit of a jump, don't you think?"

Kiba snorted, stuffing his hands into the deep pockets of his jeans. "Not really. Guy's a freaking nut job."

Although Naruto knew Kiba to occasionally badmouth his dorm mate, the two didn't seem to be an all-that-bad combination. Shino was a reserved man who seemed to be seldom bothered by much of anything, making him immune to Kiba's rambunctious attitude, and Kiba was easy-going enough to get alone with just about anyone, given enough time.

But still, Shino made Naruto a bit nervous. Maybe it was because Naruto knew that he had personal ties with Sasuke, but he still rubbed him the wrong way. Aforementioned weirdo was sitting cross-legged on his bed, once again flipping through the large album of what Naruto now knew to be clippings of past crimes. Naruto was lounging in Kiba's desk chair, spinning it around a bit in a nervous fashion, waiting for his friend to get back. When Shino had let him in to wait, Naruto got a text saying that Kiba was hanging back to talk to someone from class. Thinking it would be too awkward to just leave, only to come back down in fifteen minutes, Naruto had decided to stay, and was already regretting that choice.

Abruptly, Shino closed the book with a dull _snap_, causing Naruto's eyes to fly up to him. Shino slowly, methodically placed the book beside him, gaze presumably fixed upon Naruto's. "I have a class in ten minutes, so I will be going now."

"Um, all right," Naruto said, not sure what exactly to say. "Is it cool if I just stay here and wait for Kiba?"

"That would be cool," Shino said monotonously, beginning to get up from his bed. "I will be leaving my book here. I would appreciate it very much if you refrain from looking in it."

"I wasn't going to," Naruto said, blinking at the oddness of the request.

"Of course," Shino said, expression never changing. He toed on his sneakers, gaze never wavering. He pocketed his wallet and his keys and said, "All the same, I feel the need to voice the request."

"It's fine," Naruto assured him, shifting a bit awkwardly. "See ya later?" It came out as more of a question than a proper good-bye.

"Yes, we shall." Shino crossed the room, finally breaking eye contact. When his hand grazed the doorknob, he said, "Do not look in my book, Naruto." And then he was gone.

Naruto did not touch Shino's book.

He didn't even look at it.

…for five minutes.

And then he had flown across the room, sat himself where Shino had been sitting, and was paging through it at lightning speed.

_He was practically begging me to look through it, anyway, _Naruto thought as his eyes scanned fervently over the headlines. _Leaving it right here. Is he serious. He might as well have handed it to me._

Naruto was not looking through it to see what kind of gory cases were written about in the book, but to see what Shino saw. The man seemed to be very simple; he liked the quiet, he liked to read, he was fascinated by insects, and he was interested in learning medicine. But to keep a portfolio of old case reports, and to look through them on what seemed to be a weekly basic…

Headlines flashed up at him, dozens of mug shots gave him dull, defeated glares. "Carson arrested on suspect of McKinley case." "Serial rapist apprehended, according to Uppermoreland police." "Two suspects arrested on Drewmore drowning." "Police officer shot," "Murphy arrest on twelve counts of," "Cop killer," "three victims," "young girl," "murder," "rapes," and eventually the focal points of the headlines were the only things that caught Naruto's eye. He didn't bother reading the articles, just the titles, looking for some connection, for some clue that would help him unravel Shino's personality.

He flipped a few pages, and then stopped. The headline, "Police arrest long time suspect for two counts of murder," was not what caught his attention, but an odd page that he'd skimmed over, not realizing that he couldn't read the header. He riffled back a few pages, it caught his eye again, and he stopped. Turned the page. And stared.

It was obviously not cut from an actual newspaper, like all of the other articles. This was printed on computer paper, but the format told Naruto it was from some kind of online archive.

Still, it wasn't the paper that caught his attention, but the words.

The words were not in English.

Naruto might have mistaken the language for Chinese if he hadn't seen the picture that took up nearly a quarter of the page. It was of a young boy, looking to be around six or seven, untidy black hair slightly matted, the bags under his eyes looking even deeper due to the grayscale print job. But bad print job or no, whatever year this was printed, no matter how small the image, Naruto could pick out this face in a crown of a million.

It was Sasuke.

Naruto tore his face away from the young, haunted eyes staring up at him from the page to squint at the headline. But no matter how hard he squinted, he wasn't able to gain even a fraction of understanding as to what the article was about.

Naruto flipped the page over, and there was another article in Japanese, also printed from a computer. This was an action shot of two police officers dragging along a handcuffed man. The ink on the page muddled the image, distorting their faces, and telling him nothing.

Naruto flipped the page. "Woman arrested for…" He didn't bother to read the rest, just flipped back to see Sasuke's picture again.

He didn't know how long he stared at it, but when he heard a key slide into the doorknob, Naruto jumped up as if struck my lightning. The book was back on the bed in a second, he was standing in half. He was halfway back to his seat when Kiba bounded through the door. One look at his face told Naruto that he was safe; he seemed too enthralled, too energetic to notice much of anything. Naruto was shocked that Kiba even noticed him.

"You won't believe this!" Kiba said. "That girl I said I was staying behind to see? I got her number!" And he had, on a scrap of loose-leaf paper which he now waved in front of Naruto's face like it was the Nobel Peace Prize. "God, Naruto, she's gorgeous, you should see her. She had this long, black hair and these beautiful gray-blue eyes and--hey, man, are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost or something…"

--

"Ugh, of all the things to wear…."

"What? What's wrong with this?"

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong with it, I just hate the color."

Sakura paused mid-motion, her pause halfway up her arm. "What's wrong with you? You've never cared about what I wore before."

Naruto shrugged, battling the urge to cringe at her long-sleeved flannel blouse. It was pretty, on some level, and something he knew she'd just bought from a shopping trip to Lucky Brand Jeans. Branches of a sakura tree wound around her forearm and elbow before erupting into an explosion of pink petals, the flourishing foliage contrasting sharply with the rest of the deep purple of the rest of the garment.

Naruto was silent for several long moments, and that was what drove Sakura to finally ask, "Do you want me to change?"

That snapped the blond out of his reverie. "No, no! It's fine. Just because I don't like the color doesn't mean it doesn't look good on you." Unsure if she needed extra convincing, Naruto tacked on, "Every color looks good on you, Sakura."

She giggled, rolled her eyes, and then hooked her arm through his and pulled him up from where he sat on the edge of her bed. "C'mon. You read to go?"

No. "Yeah." Naruto grinned widely, and it felt horrible on his face, muscles cramping with the effort to keep up the expression. Sakura seemed to buy it easily enough, though.

"Then let's go!" She pulled him out of the room and shut it behind her, pocketing her keys.

Truthfully, Naruto was ready for it to be over. The date he'd been looking forward to for days now seemed like an unwelcome chore, and he couldn't wait for the moment that he'd drop her off at her door.

Naruto had started hanging out with the red-headed med student about a month ago, along with Kiba and some of his other newly acquired friends. A week after that, they'd seen each other again, in a much smaller group. A few days later he'd seen her at work, and a week after that they'd gone to Starbucks together over their break between classes.

Sakura was beautiful, Naruto knew. She was blunt, too, and wasn't afraid to smack him over the head whenever he said something stupid. She was smart, having gotten into this university with a full-paid scholarship, and was armed with a colorful arsenal of jokes about the other professors and students that Naruto couldn't help but laugh at. She was the type of person he'd like to bring home to meet Iruka. Iruka would like her, he'd approve.

And yet, Naruto had to keep on telling himself these things constantly in order to keep himself even minimally interested. He couldn't quell the uneasy feeling inside of him that he felt whenever Sakura smiled at him, obvious interest making her beautiful emerald eyes stand out even more. It was like he was betraying someone, and Naruto knew exactly who that someone was, and it wouldn't leave him be, no matter how often he beat her down.

"So where do you want to go?" Sakura asked him, sliding her hand alone his forearm to tangle her fingers with his, giving them a playful squeeze.

Naruto grinned. "Wanna go to Weinriche's?" Weinriche's was a small joint café and bakery that resided just outside of campus, serving fresh desserts and deli sandwiches. Naruto had gone there once to grab a cup of coffee with Shikamaru, and it tasted better than any cup that Starbucks could brew.

Naruto studied the way her face lit up at his words, and the way his eyes lingered on hers for a few moments too long made her blush slightly and she looked away, a small smile on her lips. Naruto knew that he was giving her the wrong impression, but honestly, he couldn't help it. He'd been studying everyone's faces lately, taking in and examining every minute detail. After two months, Naruto felt like he could read every person at face-value. He knew if they were happy, or sad, or pleased, or angry.

There was only one person that Naruto couldn't read. And this was why he went to such lengths to pay such close attention to everyone else.

Although Naruto felt that he could understand Sasuke through his body motions and actions--he slammed things a bit too hard on the desk when he was annoyed, he was lonely when he put headphones over his ears to drown out whatever conversation Naruto was having on his phone and then took them off to try and engage him in conversation once the blond man hung up, he was in a good mood when a frosted bottle of Coke was left on Naruto's desk from the vending machine in the hallway--he could never understand his face. The expressions in his eyes, the way his mouth was set, seemed to run the complete opposite direction of the way his body moved. It was like his face was receiving AM transmissions while the rest of his body ran on FM.

And then there was the other reason that Naruto kept watch so carefully. There was still that complex, unreadable expression that Sasuke got on his face every now and then, one Naruto could not decipher, and one which he desperately wanted to understand.

They held hands all the way down to the café, talking about mundane things which held Sakura's interest, even though they didn't particularly capture Naruto's. Their conversations were safe and easy, the façade he was fighting to keep up made easier by this fact.

When they were seated across from each at a small table by the large landscape window and had placed their orders, Sakura changed the topic from her roommate Ino's antics the last time she'd gotten drunk (less than twenty-four hours ago) to more dangerous waters. "So I heard that you got Sasuke for a roommate."

Naruto nearly choked on his coffee. "Y-yeah," he stuttered, frowning slightly. "Who told you?"

"Shikamaru told me," Sakura said, not seeming to notice that she had almost succeeded in killing Naruto with words alone. "Sasuke, Shikamaru, Kiba and I all went to high school together," she informed him. "Didn't he tell you that?"

Naruto didn't know which 'he' she meant, but as none of them had bothered to tell him, he just shook his head 'no'.

Sakura nodded, swirling her spoon around her mug of hot chocolate. "So how's rooming with him? Shikamaru said that you guys knew each other from middle school or something."

"We knew each other, yeah." Naruto shrugged, feigning nonchalance even though his internal organs felt like they were catching on fire one by one.

"Mmmh," Sakura hummed. And then, absent-mindedly, almost as if she were saying it to herself, she said, "Kind of sad, isn't it?"

"What is? That we knew each other?"

"No, no," she laughed, but sobered up almost immediately, looking ashamed of her small fit of giggles. "His story."

"His story?"

"He never told you?"

"Told me what?"

Sakura looked reluctant to say anything, eyes darting to the left before returning to Naruto's. "I don't know if I should tell you, if he didn't say anything…"

"What, he told you himself?" Naruto tried not to let disbelief color his voice too completely, but the slight hardening of Sakura's eyes told him that he wasn't all too successful.

"No. His friends, Shikamaru and Shino, they did."

"Then what's wrong with me knowing?"

Sakura bit her lip. "I had… a reason."

"I live with the bastard," Naruto said teasingly, even tough his motives were anything but. "Isn't that reason enough?"

"Mh. I guess."

Naruto waited, but Sakura's silence didn't seem to indicate that she wouldn't say anything, just that she was thinking hard on something. His instincts didn't let him down.

"Shino showed it to me. In some book that he kept for his criminology classes."

Naruto froze. A ticking began in his eyebrow. For a guy who didn't talk all that much--

"Well, more like he left this book lying around one day and told me not to touch it." She chuckled, but it was a bitter-sounding noise. "There were these weird articles he'd printed out in Japanese… Sasuke's picture was in them. My mom is Japanese, and she taught me the language since I was little, so…." She worried her lower lip for a few moments, and just when Naruto opened his mouth to press her for the information she so clearly knew, Sakura spoke again. "When he--Sasuke--was six, his parents were…" She trailed off again, and this time Naruto did say something.

"They were what?" He had a pretty good idea of what the "what" was, but he needed her to say it, almost like closure. He needed to hear the words from somewhere else besides his mind in order to believe them.

"They were murdered." She averted her gaze from his. "His older brother killed them."

Naruto's jaw unhinged. He hadn't expected that one. A memory of the second picture, of two cops and the handcuffed man, flashed across his mind. Now his brain was pasting features on that warped face. Someone who looked like Sasuke, maybe. Older. Maybe thinner. Maybe more boyish. But with glaring eyes, an evil red, swirling and hypnotizing. The face of a demon.

And then the first image, of a scared little boy, eyes darker than the black text that confined him to a newspaper article where the whole world could see it.

"He was in a hospital for a while after that," Sakura said, still not meeting Naruto's eyes. He was glad for that. He wasn't sure what she would see there. "They released him after a couple years, but I don't think he fit very well into the schools there… At least, that's what Shikamaru told me."

"Shimakaru?" Naruto echoed, not really caring, but confused nonetheless. His thoughts were too disturbing, too distorted for him to accurately decide what it was that he wanted.

"Yeah. He went to the same high school as Sasuke and Shino, remember?" She laughed again, and this sounded a bit more genuine. The spell of depression was gone, and Naruto hadn't noticed that the atmosphere had been so tense until it lightened. But still, the fist that had clenched about his throat was making it difficult to think, to see straight. Spots dotted his visions, and he wondered half-heartedly if he'd faint again.

"I think I know why Shino wanted me to see it, too," Sakura mused, but Naruto had sensed that the important part of their conversation was over, and he was now wondering how he could get out of this date. Fast. "I had a huge crush on him, you know," she said, needlessly in Naruto's opinion. It was written all over her face. "I was always pestering him. I followed him everywhere. I used to think I was in love." She met his eyes now, and the shocking green that had once appealed to Naruto now seemed normal, and he was longing for dark gray irises that didn't look at him so oddly, like she thought he was a different person than he knew he was. Even though he hated those eyes, and everything that went along with them, he was beginning to think he'd rather let himself hate than force himself to like. "But hearing about what happened to him made me realize that I wasn't ready. I had a lot of problems in school, and if I couldn't fix myself, how could I possibly fix him?"

She had his attention back. "''Fix him'?" Naruto repeated, eyeing her incredulously. "What do you mean by 'fix'?"

Sakura's eyebrows puckered inward as she frowned. "I guess 'fix' is the wrong word," she amended. "What I meant was--"

"No, you said what you meant," Naruto cut her off. He didn't need to fabricate an excuse for an early dismissal anymore. This was plenty enough an excuse. "What? You think just because he's different, he needs 'fixing'?"

Sakura was really frowning now, hurt entering her eyes, confusion. She didn't understand. She didn't understand Sasuke, or Naruto, the two of them together, she didn't get it. Neither did Shino, with his obvious hints and his clues, or Shikamaru, with his keen eye and his analytical mind. Neither did Kiba, who Naruto spent time with every day, he never got him, clicked with him, _knew _him. Neither did Iruka, who'd raised him since he was a child, who taught him right from wrong, who had taken in Naruto to appease his loneliness and therefore could never understand that hollow ache Naruto had carried in his chest from since he could remember. The only one who got him, who knew him, who made him feel like he existed fully in the world instead of a mere partial existence was off somewhere that wasn't here, having a beer with the neurology majors for some semblance of the company he tried to pretend he didn't want, in the game room watching friends and wondering what the appeal of the games was, reading in some remote part of campus because books were the only things that wouldn't scorn him or try to dissect him, or staring at himself endlessly in the mirror wondering if he'd ever like what he saw, just like Naruto did whenever he caught his reflection.

Alone, utterly alone, with no one to hear him or to believe his story--not even the one person who he claimed to love. The one person he had left.

"We don't need fixing," Naruto grit out. "And we most definitely don't need anyone to try."

"I don't understand,' Sakura said, once again stating the obvious. "I'm not trying to fix him or--" _say it, say me_, "--I don't get what you're saying, Naruto."

"Obviously." Naruto clenched his eyes shut tightly, opened them a few moments later--_alone, alone, he's always so alone, because he left me, he left me all alone even when he promised he wouldn't, even when he knew how it felt_--and decided that he needed to leave. A dismissal danced on the tip of his tongue, but he retracted it. A good-bye took its place, and then an apology, and they were all fighting to get out at once.

In the end, Naruto said nothing. He pushed himself away from the table, a twenty dollar bill in his hand, and placed it on the table. "For lunch," "Sorry," "I have to go," "Don't talk to me again," all of them fit, but none sounded right.

He left without another word.

--

_"Naruto? Hey! How are you?"_

"I'm doing good."

_"Is… something the matter?"_

"Yeah. I need to ask you something."

_"You know you can ask me anything."_

"I've never asked you about this before."

_"Naruto, what's wrong?"_

_So many things._

Naruto was alone in the dorm. As he'd expected, it was empty save for the orange light flowing in through the window, casting a dim red glow over everything, turning gray shadows to burgundy and the ceiling into a deep, dark pink. It was ethereal, it was nostalgic, and it was hurting enough that he couldn't hide it from Iruka.

But still, Naruto had to know.

Even if it ripped open every single little memory, even though he didn't want to remember… he did. On a certain level. The absence of the nightmares didn't bring the salvation that it should have, only made him more lonely than before. They were the only things telling him that his past was what he thought it was. They were all that made him feel justified in his fragile hatred, all that would allow him to keep Sasuke in his proper place in his world.

Asking would make him remember. And he would remember the truth, he would remember it all.

Part of him didn't want that, while the other part begged him to have the courage to ask.

He wanted to remember.

He didn't.

_You can remember anything, if you want it hard enough._

He wanted to remember.

He wanted the hatred back.

He needed to _remember_.

"Do you remember when I came home that night in the eighth grade? When I was all beaten up?"

There was a long, static-filled pause. And then a resigned, "_Yes_." The way that he said it made Naruto think that he'd waited for it for a long time, and now that it was here, he wished the time had stretched out longer.

Naruto paused too. "What did the doctors tell you?"

Iruka sounded confused as he answered. _"They told me you were bruised all over your body--a bruised rib, I think they said--and of course, and the six lacerations on your face."_

Naruto winced. He couldn't feel them, but he knew they were there, marking him, but as what he didn't know. "Nothing else? They didn't say anything else?"

"_No_," Iruka said slowly. He sounded hesitant, like he was withholding some piece of information. "_You'd hit your head pretty badly. The doctors told me to wake you up every hour the first two nights you were home, in case you got a concussion. They said that that's why you didn't… remember much of it_."

And the doctors were right, Naruto thought bitterly. He didn't remember a damn thing now.

"Did they say what they think cause it?"

Iruka was quiet for a longer moment before he said, "_Why are you asking?"_

"Because I need to know, Iruka."

"_Now_?"

"Yes, now."

_"The bruising was--well, it's pretty self explanatory, don't you think?"_

"What about the cuts?" Naruto pressed. "The ones on my _face_?" _The ones I have to look at every day, that I feel when I'm in the shower, the things that everyone sees first before they even look me in the eye._

"_A switchblade, or an army knife. The cuts were thin and fairly clean_."

Naruto let out a sigh, and waited for the memories to close in on him like a tsunami. But no such thing happened.

"_And we don't have a scrap of evidence to convict the bastards_."

_Excuse me? _"What?"

"_I went to the school a few days afterwards to explain to the principle that you wouldn't be in school for the remainder of the year_," Iruka explained. "_And while I was there, he told me about something one of the teachers overheard in the hallway_."

"What?" Naruto repeated, impatient.

"_You remember that gang that used to float around your school? The one that was constantly causing some kind of trouble_?"

Naruto snorted. "The ones who wore those stupid black jackets all the time with the clouds on them?"

"_Yes, them. The teacher overheard the big one--K-something, I don't remember--talking about how he… gave you those scars_."

The world had something wrong with it, Naruto knew, but no degree of wrong could keep him from hanging on to Iruka's every word. It hurt to listen, but it would be excruciating to stop. In his mind passed the image of a large, burly black student who'd been years older than his classmates, with six thick, whisker-like birthmarks running across his cheeks, and his grin full of yellowing, chipped teeth, sharp eyes a sharp contradiction to the rest of his dull nature.

_"There were rumors flying all around the school--him and his friends probably started it, you know how kids were when you were that age--about your… sexuality. Kisame, I think it was--he was bragging about how his gang had followed you on your way home from your friend's house and--"_

Iruka stopped talking, and the pain inside of him escalated higher, faster, more deadly, guilt exploding in his veins and making his heart ache horribly with each undeserving beat it made. Spots turned his vision askew. He couldn't see straight anymore, think rationally.

Iruka mistook his silence for anger. _"Naruto, you have no idea how sorry I am_," he croaked. "_I should have taken them to court, I should have tried harder, but it--at that time…"_

Naruto knew what Iruka was saying without prompt. Their small, two-person family had been in a financial bind at the time, and hiring lawyers, securing dates for court, would strain their already snapping budget. The move alone had almost pushed them to bankruptcy, and Naruto felt that it was more beneficial to him than taking a bunch of malicious, lonely teenagers who would never learn or find help to court.

"It's fine, Iruka," Naruto said blandly, unable to push any real reassurance into his tone. "I understand. I wouldn't have wanted you to try it, anyway. What's done is done."

What's done is done.

What's done is done.

_I can't fix it anymore._

_What have I done?_

"_Naruto?" _Iruka sounded worried. Naruto knew he needed to say something, to offer something, to placate him. To get rid of that guilty tone.

But Naruto could hardly fix himself. What made him think that he could fix Iruka?

"I have to go, Iruka," Naruto said tonelessly. "I have class," he lied, even though they both knew that on Tuesdays, Naruto's classes ended at two.

"_Naruto!"_

"Bye, Iruka."

Naruto snapped his phone shut.

Turned it to vibrate.

Listened to it buzz on his pillow for the next half hour before it stopped, staring at the ceiling, wallowing in the red of a dying run, remembering, forgetting, uncovering, sinking and drowning in countless things, so much that he didn't think anything could keep him afloat the entire mess. Didn't think he wanted anything to.

_You can remember anything, if you want it hard enough._

Naruto didn't care if it would alarm every single God-damned person in the building. He couldn't care less if it disturbed every single living soul on the entire campus. He never done this before, but the adrenaline was pumping through his veins like wildfire and he couldn't hear anything but his own heartbeat, telling him that he was alive. It told him he was in pain, that his mind had succeeded in tearing and ripping itself into bloody little shreds, that his sanity was in tatters and was putting up a blood-stained white flag. His heartbeat told him that through all of it, from when he was panting beneath Sasuke's all those years ago to the quiet and solemn glances he received from onyx eyes now, that through the ache he felt to his very core, through the over-whelming guilt and the humility and the sheer absurdity of his own actions, that he was alive.

He was alive, and surviving, and that his physical self would always be here, waiting for when his ravaged soul felt whole enough to come home.

He was _alive._

He was so very _alive._

And it felt so very, very wrong.

_It feels so wrong._

Naruto tilted his head back hands tearing whole in the bed linens, skull cracking against the wall behind him, back arching, throat ripping and tearing, the scream tearing itself loose like a wounded and deranged animal that had been backed too far into a corner for too long.

But his heart was beating, and the echoing melody of his scream ran in perfect sync with it.

_I'm still alive._

**Author's Notes: **I think I should say this, especially after this chapter, but when I started planning the story in my mind I realized I had two options: I could write about every moment, every encounter, and have this stretch out into thirty chapters, or I could do something like… snap shots, I guess, where I wrote the important parts and alluded to the rest. Obviously I chose the snapshot option. I'm not sure, but reading over it now makes me afraid that it seems rushed. If it does, then I apologize.

The final part won't be out for a while, as it'll probably be longer than the first part. As always, any questions, comments, concerns, or flaming bricks, drop a review, send an e-mail, a threatening note tied to a rock that you'd like to send flying through my window…

_**-Kodak**_


	5. Part 5

The unedited version is posted on AFF and my journal on LiveJournal, both of which are linked to on my profile.

_**-Kodak**_

"I reached the wrong end by the wrong means."

Wrong, by Depeche Mode

In a subtle way, like a person doesn't realize they'd been dozing off before their head hits a desk, Naruto noted that he didn't remember it like a constant, flowing jet of memories. It didn't start at the beginning, not at the middle, nor the end. It was like he wasn't remembering it at all, only knowing it, acknowledging it like he would the nose set plainly on his face. Like the nightmares had been someone else's, not his. Not like there had ever been a gap in his memory, but that it had never been there, the truth always sitting right in the center of his heart, of his brain. That's he'd never forgotten. That he'd never misunderstood.

--

Out of all the houses he'd been expecting, this was not it. It wasn't even a house at all; a penthouse suite, situated somewhere between the fourth and sixth stories of an eleven-story building, gleaming and new like a sore thumb in a metropolis of garbage and industrial wreck.

His messenger bag, khaki with frayed edges and broken buckles, was uncomfortable against his side. Sweat made his shirt glue itself to his skin like fly paper. His task set, his map in the form of a torn-out sheet of loose-leaf clenched in a fist with cracked knuckles, Naruto crossed the last street towards Sasuke's complex.

_"Take this straight to him, Naruto," _his guardian's words continued to ring. _"No side trips. No stops. Straight. To him."_

_"I got it, I got it," _his own words echoed back, lacking just as much stability and sounding more like a recorded message on the answering machine. _"No side trips."_

The street was deserted save for a large cat, slinking in-between the garbage cans. As Naruto grew closer, the creature darted out, into the light, and flew across the street from where Naruto had come from. The fluffed tail, tipped white, and black padded feet told Naruto that he'd been mistaken regarding the creature's species. Wondering idly what a fox had been doing so far from its woods in the first place, Naruto waltzed up and through the swinging doors. The metal framework was stainless steel, very modern for a not-so-modern town.

But who would expect anything less of the great protégé Sasuke Uchiha?

The bastard's homework was settled somewhere in his bag. The sixteen-year-old, after not missing a single minute of class over the entire year while Naruto himself missed a grand total of thirteen days, had been absent with no call nor notice for the past three days. He'd shown no signs of impending illness the last time Naruto had seen him, other than being quieter than usual. This threw Naruto for a complete loop; the guy couldn't speak a word of English when he'd first enrolled in Clifford Private School, but once he'd gotten the swing of it, he'd headed straight to the section of the English language comprised of every insult known to the country's language. He could call Naruto more names than Naruto, who'd spoken English since he was two, had ever heard of.

Sasuke had been a dark, brooding thing that shone so brightly you couldn't help but notice him. His tongue was foreign and something new to hear, like the catchy new song played over and over on the radio until it lost all appeal. At least for Naruto it did. Then he'd began to taunt the foreign tongue (he noticed a significant improvement after this). For others, it grew more sickeningly addictive every day, and it was so obvious the youth didn't want the attention. But since when did things like that make a difference?

Middle school graduation was in two weeks, a small and uneventful ceremony made to please the parents rather than the students. A sense of accomplishment was more of a requirement, it seemed, than the basic four years of math and English. His guardian Iruka would, of course, be there. He was a teacher at the high school and seemed pleased (insultingly pleased) that Naruto had managed to claw his way out with a passing grade. Passing if you squinted.

That being said, while Naruto's legs skimmed awkwardly along the floor from his position on the bottom rung of the ladder, Sasuke sat so high up he was in danger of his high horse throwing him off.

The guy was Asian, so that could have been key, but did he have to graduate at the top of the class? He didn't speak a word of English when he'd first come, and honestly, Naruto wasn't so sure that he knew how to now. The two were in completely opposite classes. Sasuke joined in with the honors and AP classes for calculus and Physics, while Naruto was stuck with career-prep in Algebra 1 and Language and Composition. But even when they strayed paths in public settings, the meetings were never all that pleasant. Sometimes Naruto felt that Sasuke waited until he was at the pinnacle of his emo-boy bad mood before hunting the blond down, just to make the encounters as explosive and violent as possible. Naruto couldn't bring to memory one decent, calm conversation they'd shared in the presence of other students.

But, hey, who needed words for a reputation when you had fists?

There were some people Naruto couldn't help but like. He was attracted to them, and they to he, and through mutual attraction could form some sort of bond, whether fickle or iron-clad. Then there were the people who put a sick feeling in his stomach when he heard their voice, made his fists clench whenever their eyes met.

Sasuke was both.

Naruto's eyes tightened at the memory of their first head-on collision. It took a week before their heated glares cooled and staled, no longer enough to sedate that unquenchable thirst for contact. For the feel of hard bone against furled knuckles, to feel hot breath as they got into each others face. To have foreign blood splash against their skin and to taste their own in kind. It was a short skirmish, half a minute before hall aids tore them apart, an unrefined quarrel that was more tugging hair and going for weak spots. Their spot was obvious and no good. They learned. They learned to dodge like a bullet and strike like a falcon, and learned to make use of quite and desolate spots. The math and science hallway after third period every fourth day of their six-day rotation. The old auditorium that had had a 'renovation' sign on it for over a year. The tiny network of alleys that stripped the surrounding grounds like a cobweb.

Their fights continued, and the scale of bruises quickly began to tip in Sasuke's favor, once the initial shyness of real damage dissolved. Naruto sometimes avoided the hot spots, if nothing but to calm Iruka's worried face and his friends' anxious stares whenever he showed up with a fresh patch of shiny red surrounding his eye or his cheek.

Sasuke knew. He must have. He wore a sneer whenever Naruto took a shortcut, although the blond remained positive that no one followed him. Sasuke never brought it up in words, but the condescending look in his eyes whenever he caught Naruto in the act spoke volumes. Somehow, he knew. The bastard just knew. This deadly game of cat and mouse lasted well into Winter.

Of course, Sasuke wasn't the only one Naruto found himself in regular skirmishes with. The football jocks, the black kids with baggy clothes and bad music, the younger, scrawny kids who had more bark than bite but were so quick on their feet that keeping track of them was impossible, and holding onto them even harder. Plenty. Naruto supposed it was just something in his personality. Maybe he was labeled a poser for having a Japanese name with no heritage to back it up. Maybe it was his diminutive height that made him so easy to look down upon.

His sociology teacher had once told his class that for every person that liked you, there were at least two who did not. Naruto had yet to meet what was sure to be a huge flock of admirers, but looked forward to the day that he did.

But so far, he'd been stuck with the not-so-friendly crowd. Sometimes he wondered if even his 'friends' had strayed over to that side. But until then Naruto grinned and bore the title they'd given him with pride. 'Monster'. It was fitting, in a way. Monsters were vastly misinterpreted creatures, and always smarter than those who had created them.

The doorman raised an eyebrow at him. Naruto flashed a nonplussed grin and pointedly shifted his shoulder strap so that his pack swung against his hip. "I'm here to give Sasuke Uchiha some homework. He up there?"

The doorman waited a ridiculous amount of time before sniffing in distain and muttering, in an altogether too-prim voice for such a small town, "The young sir lives on the fourth floor. The elevator is down the hallway past the lobby desk."

Naruto waited, and under the expectant gaze, waited for further direction. Receiving nothing, he just nodded awkwardly and strode past him to the dim hallway by the dim desk.

"…Mr. Uchiha is still attending school?"

Naruto stopped in his tracks and whipped his head around. Sasuke not going to school? Of course. And president Bush had found a cure for breast cancer through personal experience.

"Yeah. Why wouldn't he?"

He was beginning to grow annoyed by being looked at as if he were a tiny fraction of his age. "Ask him yourself."

"Fine!" Naruto snapped. He whirled around, determined not to stop even if spoken to. He was uninterrupted and made it to the elevator doors winded. And he couldn't tell why.

The ride upwards was smooth, and Naruto leaned his head back against the wood paneling of the elevator wall, thinking the doorman's words over. Sasuke had never mentioned any future extended absences from school, not had he shown any symptoms of a cold. Up until the last day Sasuke had been seen at school, a Friday, the foreign student had been colder than usual, slipping back into his native tongue, taking longer to realize that until Naruto had to hit him over the head and order him to speak in words that he could understand. But Sasuke was like that, Naruto knew. Like a teenage girl, Sasuke fell into week-long spells of bitchiness and sullenness. Naruto didn't mind. It was just another reason to use fists instead of words to knock him out of it. That Friday, however, was different. On that day, Naruto had avoided him like he would the black plague.

_Ding_

Naruto shook his head, his thoughts flying to the back of his head, and he stepped out of the elevator. Sasuke lived in apartment 409. The first eight were grouped like small complexes to one side of the vast building, 409 and 410 being the master suites, and the latter under construction. Ten rooms to a floor, all lain out in a similar fashion. All costing more than ten combined years of Iruka's pay, no doubt. It was sickening, the amount of money people spent on just an apartment. He knocked on the first one and waited.

And waited.

He waited ten seconds, blinked, furrowed his brows, and knocked again.

Still no answer.

After the fifth set of knocks, by which time it had become more of a hammering, Naruto was considering just leaving the work by the door. The courage he'd tried to talk himself into this morning was waning fast in face of the door to Sasuke's apartment. Naruto didn't know to deal with it without ignoring it, and this was a far cry from the word 'ignore'. 'Confrontation' seemed better suited.

_There's nothing to be afraid of, _Naruto told himself. _It's fine. He's fine. You're fine. He probably had a fever then, he was delirious. Forget about it. He probably has._

Naruto sighed, weighing his misery as only a fourteen-year-old could, licking his dry lips. For a moment, he could taste the smoke again. And before he knew it, the blond was twisting the unlocked doorknob and letting himself into the suite.

--

Naruto hadn't caused much of a disturbance besides that first tumultuous day when he and Sasuke made enough of a ruckus to alert the residents on every floor of their dorm building. On that day, the rooms had been full of people who had their eyes and ears doing a constant three-sixty, taking in everything, every odd detail, every bit of sordid gossip, everything and anything that would make this foreign place a home. But after several months, people stopped caring as much. Young adults played their music loudly and no one minded much. Students thundered down the halls and they stopped getting shouted at. Instead of every noise sticking to their minds like flypaper, it went in one ear and out the other.

Naruto was fortunate in this way. It felt good to scream, to let the pain roaring in his throat combat the life-shattering guilt budding up and boiling over, threatening to kill his insides. The guilt that made him question everything he knew, everything he thought he knew, everything he'd built himself up to be, everything he _wanted _to be. Everything, gone, and he felt completely justified at screaming as if he were falling off the face of the Earth. Because, in a way, that's exactly what he was doing. Falling without ever having the chance to climb back up again.

The door slammed open.

Of course, there was an exception to every rule. The one person who wouldn't just ignore something. And he stood in the threshold, stepping in and panting, letting the door fall shut behind him.

_Sasuke._

_Oh God._

_What have I done?_

"What's wrong?" Now that he saw that Naruto was in my physical harm, Sasuke seemed reluctant to enter any farther into the room. "I heard screaming."

_Actually, you heard part of me shrivel up and die. Actually, you heard the biggest invitation for an "I told you so" in the world. _"S-sorry," was all Naruto could utter. "It's nothing."

Sasuke's right eyebrow cocked itself higher than the other. "You were screaming over nothing?"

"Erm…" It wasn't quite the articulate response he'd been hoping for, but Naruto couldn't think of nothing in the English language that would sit this particular conversation. He wished he didn't need words. That Sasuke could reach in through his head and grab the answer, all so Naruto wouldn't have to sat it aloud.

Sasuke stood there, waiting. When Naruto failed to supply him with an answer, he sighed. "Whatever," Sasuke muttered, turning around and reaching for the door. "I'll let you get back to your fit, then. Try not to disturb our neighbors."

"Where did you go that night?"

Sasuke blinked, confused. "Excuse me?" He had one hand on the door knob now, and it was lingering, as if half-tempted to yank the door open and dart away right this instant.

Naruto bit his lip. He couldn't tell which emotion was going to win the war that was currently splitting his head in two; pride or guilt. Pride would make him keep up the façade of the victim trapped in his rapist's room. Guilt made him want to confess everything, to apologize over and over until his voice cracked and his mouth ran dry. He was treading slowly, unsure of how either he or Sasuke would react.

"The last night we saw each other," Naruto mumbled in a rush under hiss breath.

Sasuke's eyebrows furrowed and he frowned. "I can't hear a word that you're saying."

As tempting as it was to just say "Never mind" and live life like this conversation had never happened, Naruto knew himself well enough to know he'd never be able to sleep at night knowing he'd given up. Guilt would drive him to misery faster than Sasuke would walk out that door.

So he repeated himself, slowly, clearly. "Where did you go the last night we saw each other?" he asked. "Back in middle school. I--" He was biting the bullet, he knew. This was dangerous, After this, he'd never be able to return to the safe cloud of ignorance he'd been floating on for so many years. Sasuke wouldn't ever let it go, and to be fair, Naruto couldn't blame him. "I woke up and you weren't there…"

Sasuke's hand slid from the door, and he didn't hesitate to abandon his station by the threshold to cross the room. He ended at the foot of Naruto's bed, eyeing him incredulously, almost angrily. "Why would you believe anything I say?"

_I'm sorry._

Naruto shrugged, feigning nonchalance. "It's just a question, bastard," he said, displeased to note how his voice quaked. Surely, Sasuke would notice. Surely, he wouldn't make Naruto say it. He'd know and let it go. He wouldn't tear Naruto apart any worse than the blond was already doing to himself. "You don't have to answer."

Again, Sasuke didn't hesitate. As soon as the last word had left Naruto's mouth, Sasuke had put a knee on the bed and hoisted himself up. On his knees he shuffled closer, looming a foot over Naruto's hunched figure. They were inches from touching. Naruto eyed him warily, frightened of what he'd say, frightened of what he'd do, and most of all, scared witless of how he himself would react.

"Are you scared of me?" Sasuke asked. The way his eyes were alight with energy, with shock, with confusion, completely bellied the calmness in his voice. It seemed that Sasuke was a good actor.

"Would you believe me if I said 'no'?" Naruto countered with a question of his own. He studied Sasuke's face carefully, looking for hints as to the true dominant emotion running through the older man at the moment.

Sasuke seemed to consider it for a moment before saying, "Yes, I would believe you." Naruto was surprised at the answer, and even more surprised when Sasuke leaned forward on his hands, crawling across Naruto's legs to reach the other side of him, There, he sat cross-legged against the wall, mimicking Naruto's position. "I'll answer your question," Sasuke said once he settled, "If you answer one of mine."

Naruto debated it with himself for a moment. Sasuke looked ready to simply shrug it off if Naruto said 'no'. The blond was seriously beginning to doubt that Sasuke's calm face was really a mask. "All right," he sighed, dreading the question.

Sasuke nodded once, lightly, as if he'd made a deal he'd correctly predicted the outcome of. "That night, after you fell asleep," Sasuke said, "I went out to the drug store." Naruto blinked, surprised at such a simple answer. He was expecting something far more complicated. But Sasuke went on, "It was late at night, and there weren't any convenience stores open 24/7 in my neighborhood. I took the subway up to near our school to the CVS. You were sleeping so deeply when I left, I figured you'd still be asleep by the time I got back. But when I returned…"

Sasuke trailed off, and Naruto asked, "What did you need at the drug store?"

At that, Sasuke turned away. _Is he embarrassed? _"I didn't have any Tylenol or Advil in the house," Sasuke explained in a low voice. "I thought you might want some asprin for… the pain." Sasuke shrugged.

Naruto now wished that he hadn't asked. He hadn't been aware of it, but he'd been holding onto one last grudge to keep himself from feeling completely at fault. Sasuke had left him without a word, without a note, without a word of good-bye. Now even that was gone. _He went out in the dead of night to buy me some pain medications. Fuck._

"When I saw that you had gone without so much as a note, I figured you were angry with me, and didn't want to see me." Even Sasuke couldn't hide the pain in his voice. "And I was right."

Naruto didn't know what to say, again. Lost in sorting his thoughts, he'd completely forgotten his promise to answer one of Sasuke's questions.

Until he asked, "How is it that you got those scars?"

--

There was no evidence to the contrary, but Naruto had a feeling that not a drop of paint had adorned the walls since Sasuke had moved in. They were that same conformist white, a blank slate in which families could paint as they pleased. But these walls were still white. The floor was covered in lack-luster blue carpeting, cheap and also meant to be replaced. There were no photo frames on the walls. No TV in the living room, or what Naruto assumed to be the living room. There was a computer in the corner on a plain oak desk, but it was shut off. A two-seater sofa with an empty coffee table.

And, most importantly, only one pair of shoes by the door.

After sliding his own off and putting them next to the black loafers, Naruto slowly wondered through, looking around himself as he did. There was a short hallway. All three doors were shut. There was another spouting off to the side of the living room, also closed. Another door by the dining room where there sat a polished wooden table with only one chair, and no placemats. A large kitchen with many cabinets Naruto suspected were empty, an industrial-sized fridge, a dishwasher, lower cabinets, a toaster and microwave that looked like they'd come straight from the box mere seconds ago, and a booth with two built-in swivel chairs. One chair empty, the other full of sleeping boy with a collapsed head on the black marble surface.

Sasuke's face was turned away from him, but from the soft and steady rise and fall of his shoulders, Naruto could tell he was asleep. His normally orderly spikes (Naruto suspected copious amounts of hair gel to be at fault) were jumbled with bedhead. The black wife beater was a stark contrast to the usual immaculate white uniform shirt Naruto had always seen him in. He wore loose-fitting corduroy shorts and his feet were bare, curled where the toes met the floor.

Naruto had never noticed just how thin the guy was until now. They were at the age where they'd either started along with growth spurts or had to wait a year. Sasuke belonged to the former category, Naruto the latter. The raven-haired teenager was a good six inches taller than the blond, a definite advantage when it came to fighting. Naruto had never seen Sasuke eat anything from the school's cafeteria. Instead, he brought a black box with him that held sections of foreign-looking food, most of it containing dull-looking white rice. Naruto was shocked that someone who downed so many carbs on a daily basis could stay as thin as a rail.

Sasuke's arms were like wire, taught with thin muscle and not much else. His shirt folded into a concave stomach, and his knees were bony knobs, thin calves stretching too far to meet smallish feet. His skin looked too tight, too thin, to contain what it did. Naruto moved around to bend over the counter and peer at his closed eyelids, under which hung heavy purple pillows. Even his face, under such natural sunlight filtering in through the kitchen window, looked sunken, like a skull.

Whilst on the roof they frequented during lunch breaks, they'd sat with their still-growing legs dangling over the edge, chugging cans of soda, kicking shins, making a few near-death pushes that involved one shifting too close to the seeming limitless amount of empty space beneath their feet. They did all this underneath the heavy light filtering through the atmosphere, the sun's fingertips stroking through their hair and pressing gently on their clothes. In such brightness, Sasuke's hair had always seemed a deep, dark blue as opposed to the black Naruto knew it was. Every now and then, a pale hand would flick up to brush through his bangs, stroking it back against his scalp, creating a wave of texture like an ocean wave. Every time Sasuke had done that, Naruto's fingers twitched at his side, and he had to clench them into tight fists to limit the movement.

And now, with no reason to stop him, Naruto's hand, unbidden, reached out to give it a feather-soft stroke from part to the nape of his neck, and his fingers recoiled as if snapped at by a viper.

It was so damn _soft_. It felt like the down of a feather. Feather light to the touch, silky and smooth even in its knotted state. Naruto couldn't resist the temptation to touch it again, this time with a little more pressure. It was like dry water, the strands stroking the rough pads of his fingertips as if they had a mind of their own.

Again and again, from bangs to nape, parting easily and making a fork of hair that smoothed straight down, except for the stubborn tufts that refused to stay down at the back. Mesmerizing. It was mesmerizing. And in the sun, it seemed to have an almost blue hue to it. Hypnotized by the texture and the quiet, Naruto allowed his hip to settle against the counter as he continued to pet the boy he'd traded more fists and half-translated conversations with than any orderly human contact.

It was mere curiosity. Making those waves in his hair of his own accord. To control the way the colors shifted, from black to a dark, bluish hue, so deep and so different it was almost purple.

But it was something else, too. Something more than control. Like his soft touches connected them in a way that lunch breaks on a school roof could not. If Sasuke did it, and Naruto could do it, it was a deeper connection, he rationalized. Naruto continued to stroke back his hair, feeling like he was in a different person's skin. Sasuke's skin. The fear of touch he'd been harboring since the Friday before was drifting back to the unreachable recesses of his mind, where they wouldn't ruin this movement. Where it wouldn't ruin _them_.

And then a cold hand reached out and snatched his wrist, leaving his digits sunken into disheveled hair. Blank black eyes glared up at him for a moment, the smooth obsidian bright with the unbridled curiosity Naruto should have known would be there.

The grip on his wrist tightened momentarily before lapsing to a gentle hold, allowing the blond to escape with his hand still attached. Sasuke Uchiha regarded him warily before speaking.

"What are you here?"

A perfectly acceptable question, Naruto thought. One deserving of an equally sensible answer. But Naruto was afraid that Sasuke wasn't just requiring about his sudden presence in the room.

He felt suddenly claustrophobic. The rhythmic motions of his hand stroking Sasuke's hair had diminished his equal fear, but now it was coming back full-force, this time paired with an extreme sense of awkwardness.

"Naruto?"

Naruto always found it odd how Sasuke pronounced his name. He figured it was a Japanese thing, to have difficulties pronouncing the 'r' sound. It made his lips twitch slightly at the sound. He'd spent many a afternoon trying to coach the transfer student proper speech, as well as teaching him a few choice words.

_"Naruto," _growled a husky voice, darker than what he was used to, and the guttural tone of it sent shivers racing up his spine, alarm bills shrieking in his ears. Naruto shook his head, blinked, and saw the Sasuke of the present staring curiously at him.

_I'm imagining (remember) things. Get a grip, idiot._

_"Naruto."_

Naruto belatedly shrugged, and slid his bag from his shoulder to lay it on the counter. "I brought you your homework," he said, sliding the flap of his bag off to shuffle through the bags contents.

"You didn't knock."

"I did. You were too passed out to notice."

Naruto's gaze darted up and met Sasuke's dark one. His narrow eyes had thinned even further, and he was opening his mouth, probably to inquire about Naruto's temporary lapse of sanity, but the blond beat him to the punch.

"What's with the absences, anyway?" he asked, yanking his eyes away from Sasuke's to return his attention to finding the homework and, therefore, to getting the Hell out of here. He could deal with this later. In a school setting, preferably, with more eyes and more ears to keep a dangerous conversation in check.

"Been busy," Sasuke replied. "Drink?"

"Huh? Dlin--oh, drink?"

"Isn't that what I asked?"

Naruto snorted and, not for the first time, said "Your accent sucks."

Smirking quietly, Sasuke merely replied, "So you say. You get used to it."

Frowning, Naruto shrugged, not knowing what to make of that. Did he mean anyone could live with it, or was it just Naruto? Then Sasuke tossed him a orange can, and catching it, the blonde noticed it was a Fanta. "You like orange soda?"

Sasuke grunted, and the blond wondered if even understood what he said. Unless the Japanese teen was paying a decent amount of attention, he had difficulty deciphering what it was that Naruto was saying. At the moment, he still looked half-asleep. Naruto popped the metal tab and took a deep swig, clearing out the fuzziness in his head a little. He hadn't felt it when he came in, but now that Sasuke was awake and moving, making scuffing sounds as his feet slid over the floor, his breath soft-sounding, Naruto not only felt like a trespasser in the home, but in his own skin as well.

Sasuke fished himself out a bottle of water, and Naruto caught a glimpse of the fridge's contents before the door could swing shut. There was a half-finished gallon of milk, a carton of eggs, a mesh bag full of tomatoes, and a handful of other things Naruto could have counted on one hand. It was so bare--too bare, from what he'd seen of other's fridges.

Squishing down the niggling thought in the back of his head that his refrigerator looked very much the same, Naruto refocused on his bag. He set the can of soda on the counter, and located a slightly bent manila envelope. He pulled it out slowly, and then tossed it on the counter.

"There," Naruto said. "Your homework."

"Hn." Sasuke took his time twisting off the cap of his water bottle, taking a heavy gulp and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before saying, "Homework, eh?"

"Yeah. There it is." Naruto picked up his abandoned can and tilted it back, gulping it as fast as he could, feigning extreme thirst. In reality, his stomach was twisting itself in knots, and the icy beverage was making it ache even worse. But he had to get out of here. He'd thank Sasuke for the soda, and leave the imminent fight for later, for when he could better handle it.

Sasuke frowned and made no move to pick the folder up. "Why?"

Naruto finished his drink and swallowed painfully. "That's what they do here in America," he replied, already closing his bag. "Miss a few days and you're hunted down like a dog." He lifted the shoulder strap, and let his hand hover awkwardly for a moment. "Thanks for th--" But he stopped talking when Sasuke scowled, dark and angry eyes boring holes into Naruto's shoes. He was muttering something in Japanese, and despite hearing the gibberish nearly every day for the better part of the school year, Naruto still couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"What?" the blond asked, brows furrowing.

Sasuke's eyes snapped up, like he'd completely forgotten he was there. "I speak," Sasuke muttered, "my guardian hasn't called school yet."

Naruto's curiosity got the better of him. Instead of saying a dismissive "Oh, right" like he should have, he asked, "What, can he get you out of your homework?"

Sasuke shook his head, sighing, but not letting their eyes to break contact again. He seemed to mull over his words for a long while before saying, "I am not return to school."

"What? Christ, how sick are y--"

"Not sick," Sasuke said quickly. "I… moving."

"Moving," Naruto repeated, tasting the word on his tongue and quickly deciding it didn't really fit. "What do you mean by 'moving'?"

Sasuke scowled, like he was scolding Naruto for his incompetence. His eyes, however, remained guarded. "My guardian received new job. We move closer to it."

"Move… where? Up state?"

"California."

Naruto didn't bother to repeat that word. He knew exactly how wrong it would be without allowing it to taint his mouse. His articulate response was, "And what the fuck is in--there?"

"His job," Sasuke repeated, giving Naruto a look that clearly displayed his lack of respect for Naruto's intellect.

"And what is his 'job'?" For reasons he couldn't understand, Naruto was beginning to panic. When Sasuke said 'moving', he hadn't felt much of anything, although that might have been a symptom of the shock that would soon make his throat feel like a steel-boned fist had it clutched tight. 'California' made his stomach fall right to the floor of the alien apartment.

"I don't know," Sasuke said dismissively, waving his hand. "He do something."

It felt too cliché, too girly, to ask "When were you planning on telling me?" but Naruto desperately wanted to know. This didn't seem like a plan someone thought up overnight. His guardian couldn't be _that _spontaneous.

Even though Naruto didn't say it, Sasuke seemed to feel the need to supply Naruto with an answer.

"It was not much planned," Sasuke said. Naruto couldn't tell if it was just him, but his accent seemed thicker in his haste to get the right words out. "My guardian very like that. All the time. He didn't--didn't--" His eyes narrowed like they always did when he failed to come up with an appropriate word. "Opinion me," was what he came up with, and although the words made no logical sense, Naruto understood. "He decide."

_When were you going to tell me?_

_Were you ever going to bother?_

Naruto, for the life of him, couldn't figure out why it had him so upset. Oddly enough, he wasn't really thinking about his foreign friend at the moment. He wasn't even thinking about last Friday, like his thoughts had been leading him to do lately. He was thinking of his classmates, and the last conversation he'd had with any of them. Any of them but Sasuke. He couldn't think of a single one. The weight suddenly disappeared from his stomach; he felt like he had no stomach at all. His eyes were burning, and he didn't know why, only that the roof was large and empty with two people, but with only one it would be--

"Are you crying?" a confused voice asked. Naruto's thought process stuttered to a halt, and he knew that he had to leave.

"Thanks for the soda. There's your homework. I'll see you--" _No I won't_. "Bye." Short, simple, and quick as a bullet. He barely even felt it as every organ in his body died simultaneously and _damnit it all, I don't know why._

Naruto didn't know that he'd already turned until he felt Sasuke's hand, larger than his own, gripping his elbow tightly, pulling it back towards him.

"Hey, man, ever hear of personal space?" Naruto tried to push as much juvenile rudeness into his voice as possible, but it didn't seem to faze Sasuke at all. In fact, it had the complete opposite of the desired result. Instead of freeing Naruto, he used his free hand to grasp the folder of papers and send them flying across the room, the papers flying and fluttering like the amputated wings of birds.

"Hey!" was Naruto's knee-jerk reaction, and a moment later had shoved Sasuke back a foot with his forearm, his arm falling free from Sasuke's tight grip. This was it. This was the perfect solution, the perfect excuse not to talk. For even though Sasuke could barely speak in proper English, he, Naruto, was far worse off when it came to a battle of words. His fists clenched before he struck one arm, pointing to hid fallen shoulder bag. "Go and get those."

Sasuke just stared at him, unfazed by the push or the order. "No. I don't need those papers."

"I don't give a shit about what you need," Naruto snarled. "I brought them all the way here so your lazy ass didn't have to go and get them from school. You could at least _look _at them."

"No," Sasuke repeated. "I not return to school. I don't need the homework."

Naruto worried the inside of his cheek with his canines for a short moment, and then he huffed, shoving his fists into his pockets. As suddenly as it had come, the fight had gone out of him, and all he wanted was to leave.

_Who's the last person I've talked to besides him?_

Let Sasuke go. Let him leave, to a completely different time zone, at that. Let him go.

_Let him go?_

Naruto was fine before him. He'd be fine after him. Like a storm, Sasuke had come without any introduction, any warning, and he'd leave just as fast with only a field of wreckage and carnage as proof of his existence.

_Let him go?_

"Whatever," Naruto muttered. He kept his voice low, afraid that it would crack. "Do whatever the fuck you want. I'm out."

Naruto once again attempted to move past the older Asian teen. He shied away from Sasuke, trying to keep a distance between them. It didn't make a difference. This time, however, instead of holding onto his arm, Sasuke snaked an arm across Naruto's abdomen--_I feel his fingers, should you be able to feel that through two shirts_--and encircled his waist. Naruto jerked his body backwards and ended up pressing himself into the divider that separated the kitchen from the rest of the house.

"Stop _touching _me!" Naruto snapped. "What the fuck is your problem?"

Sasuke eyes narrowed. Unperturbed, or a very good actor, he stepped closer. Naruto didn't try to avoid him this time. He was too scared to see if Sasuke would chase him, and the implications that would be behind it. "What yours?"

"You're my problem," Naruto deadpanned. "Move."

"No. I upset you."

"You didn't. I don't get upset."

When Sasuke rose an eyebrow, Naruto amended, "Not over you." He straightened himself up. Sasuke and he were less than a foot apart, and the shorter the distance became, the miniscule shifts Sasuke made by shuffling his weight from foot to foot, shortening the distance even further in a subtle manner, the harder and faster Naruto's heart beat in his chest. "Can I go now?"

"No." Sasuke took a step closer, and Naruto's head cracked against the wall as he jolted backwards, flattening himself and wishing the barrier to swallow him whole. He recognized this position. The cool plaster felt, for a moment, like the thin, freezing metal of a locker door. The stagnant air smelled like body odor and chlorine. In both situations, they were alone. Just as they were now. Just like they were then. Sasuke's arm propped itself he wall by Naruto's head, and he could smell the older boy's breath.

_Like smoke._

"Does it matter for you?" Sasuke hissed. "That I'm gone tomorrow?"

Naruto didn't even hesitate in saying, "Good riddance," because, really, what else could he say? 'Yes'? 'No'? The first would be unbelievable. The second would sound a lie.

Sasuke stared at him with the first dumb expression ever to be witnessed on his noble face. Then it slid to disapproval, with a small trace of disappointment. Then understanding, and finally, the smug look that Naruto knew so well slid right back over his face like the pointer of a compass to North. It was a surprise to him that he'd very nearly missed this. He hadn't seen it, not really, for days.

And then, to Naruto's surprise, Sasuke began to laugh. It wasn't a happy sound, nor was it a full-blown laugh. It was a self-depreciating laugher that made Naruto feel like scum for having caused that sound.

_Make it stop_.

The laughter grew louder, more hysteric, and Naruto recalled the laughter of villains in all the movies he loved to watch. It sounded like Sasuke was slowly building up to that, and as much as he'd love to have reason to hate Sasuke, as much as he'd love to label him the Joker to his Batman, hearing that Sasuke reached, even for a moment, the pinnacle of dark insanity was too much to bear.

His hand had clenched into a fist before he couldn't even register what it was he was dong. By the time he realized what he was about to do, his fist had already snapped into Sasuke's cheek.

Sasuke stumbled back several steps, and Naruto was pleased to see that he'd stop laughing. His head was bent, as he wiped the back of his hand against his lip, and then pulled it away to inspect the smear as if he'd never seen blood before. Blatant shock was mirrored in every one of his actions, and yet when he looked up, his gaze was settled and calm as he said, "You hit me."

"You deserved it. Don't laugh at me, retard. People are gonna think you're a psycho… "

"Hn," he mutter blankly. "Is that what you think me for? That I'm insanity?"

The automatic 'yes' caught in his throat as, upon closer inspection, Naruto noticed something slightly off in Sasuke's expression. Despite the slightly hysteric look that remained in his black eyes, Naruto couldn't bring himself to insult him. He was sure he didn't look too put together himself. Everyone cracked. Unfortunately, Sasuke was choosing now to do so.

Sasuke spit a glob of blood at the ground by Naruto's feet, and the sympathetic path his mind had begun to consider crippled beneath his feet. He couldn't tell how he felt, only that he didn't like it.

"I was going to tell you."

Slightly shaken from the abrupt change in subject, Naruto asked, "Tell me what?"

Sasuke shook his head slightly, muttering something in rapid Japanese under his breath. Before Naruto could ask him to translate, Sasuke plowed on, "That I'm leaving. I was to tell you."

"Well, you're telling me now," Naruto muttered. He was slowly inching himself away from the divider. When Sasuke had stumbled back, he'd ended up near the opposite wall, giving Naruto a bit more room to maneuver.

Sasuke was losing his understanding look and raised a curious eyebrow, frowning slightly now in confusion. He didn't understand, but to be fair, neither did Naruto.

Clearing his throat, the blond forced out, "I don't really care… that you're leaving."

"You're lying," Sasuke hissed, although a trace of doubt laced his words like arsenic.

"No, I'm not," Naruto cut in. "I have no reason to. All we do at school is beat the shit out of each other and talk about how much we hated everyone else. Why would I waste time missing you?" Naruto knew how he'd feel if these kinds of things were said to him, but he couldn't bring himself to care very much at this point. He wanted to leave before he did more damage that would prevent him from forgetting. Prevent him from leaving. "I have other friends, you know." Even though he didn't. "If you don't have anything else retarded to say, I'm leaving." He took a deliberate step forward, but paused in the action of taking a second.

Anger.

Fuck, he'd never seen anyone look so angry before.

Sasuke hissed something in Japanese through gritted teeth, and it reminded Naruto strongly of a cobra's hiss he'd heard before while watching Animal Planet. Then the snake had struck the guy who'd been dangling him from his arm with bared fangs. And as entertaining as it was then, that certainly did not apply now. His feet spread apart slightly, ready for a fight if need be, Naruto asked, "What did you think I was here for, huh?" As soon as the words left Naruto's lips, the snake struck, and a memory arose in his mind and sunk in like a quick and fatal poison, his heart contracting in pain and surprise.

_"Hey, you don't have gym this period." Naruto slid his shirt up and over his head before throwing it messily into a pile in his locker. "What's up? Someone bothering you again?"_

_Sasuke's hand gripped his forearm just as he was about to shed his gym shorts. "Naruto?"_

_"What?"_

_"I--"_

"Are you trying for funny?" Sasuke was growling. "You think I'm not serious?"

"Well, you're obviously not laughing," Naruto breathed.

_"I--"_

_Shut up, go away, get back and let me __**breathe**__--_

_"What? What's wrong?" He was getting slightly concerned now. Sasuke still hadn't let go of his arm, and that made him nervous too. "Sasuke?"_

_Sasuke's head had been hanging low, but now it snapped up. Assertiveness and stubbornness made his eyes burn in his pale face. Naruto took a step back. He felt the cold locker come in contact with his bare skin._

_"W-what are you doing?"_

"What is it that you want, Sasuke?" Naruto was afraid and very certain of what it was Sasuke wanted. He was most adverse to giving it to him.

"Don't go," Sasuke said, his voice turning it into more of a command than a plea. "Don't leave."

There was a long, quiet silence in which neither of them spoke. Sasuke was breathing slightly heavily as if he'd run a few rounds around the apartment, and Naruto could hardly breath at all. What was it Sasuke expected from him now? What was it that he wanted, exactly?

And more importantly, what did he, Naruto, want?

Naruto didn't know what Sasuke said next. It was a lowly-spoken hiss of Japanese, a short sentence the blond didn't have the time to pick apart, couldn't guess its contents from his rival's face, before it attacked again.

_When Naruto went into a home other than his own, the first thing that struck him was the smell. It was the smell of that person, only many times more potent, and surrounding him in a thick current. That particular, distinctive scent of all those people combined with all of their possessions, their plants, their animals, the laundry detergent they used, the food they cooked, bundled into one that he'd get used after half an hour. But he couldn't smell his own home, smell his own scent, or taste his own taste. It was as part of him as his own flesh and bone._

_Was this what people tasted like? Did all saliva taste the same? Because Naruto would swear on every grave of every person he'd lived long enough to watch die, on every grave he'd ever have to visit, that he would never in his life get used to that taste, that smell of the other's boys skin that was abruptly shoved under his nose._

_Kissing Sasuke was like swallowing ash._

_But it would have been a lie to call it a kiss. It was a pair of cool, chapped lips scraping clumsily along his, sharp canines biting in every now and then. It was a thin, slippery tongue slithering into his mouth and thrusting past his teeth, roaming where it pleased. It was a large hand pinching at the junctures of his jaw with bruising force. It was the blond crying out from the ascending pain of it, and alarm as his mouth was pried and kept open by greedy fingers. It was his fist that had escaped Sasuke's other hand that beat against the boy's chest, and when the taller boy pressed closer, it was Naruto pulling at his hair. It was Sasuke hissing in pain before pulling back, releasing Naruto's jaw before capturing the other hand that was still buried in hair the blond had once marveled as so soft. It was large hands snaking around his wrists before the other pinched his jaw and continued his not-a-kiss. It was Sasuke with an air of trying to do something he'd seen so often, but couldn't quite pull off, so he tried harder._

_The taste was heavy and disturbing. It wasn't unpleasant, but reminiscent of what Naruto imagined he'd taste if he licked under the grate of a fireplace, or the cinders left from collapsed coals. The pleasant, woodsy smell they gave off. He tasted like that._

_Naruto never wanted to see another fire in his life._

_The way his head was forced back made it hard to breathe, and his face went lax as his mind swayed to and fro, not processing the present, still stuck in the not-too-distant past when they were glaring, but had a reasonable distance between the two. His mind was stuck at a bump, the present waving itself tantalizingly over his conscious._

_Sasuke slipped his tongue back into his own mouth, kissed Naruto's lower lip, then the top, and drew back. A faint gleam of fear entered his eyes as he gazed into Naruto's, awaiting a reaction. And a reaction he got._

_Whenever they fought, Naruto liked to think he always gave it his all. He hit as hard as he could, he ducked and quickly as was possible. But even he surprised himself by the stinging ache in his knuckles when he punched Sasuke, signaling that he may have hit hard enough to dislocate his jaw._

_Sasuke stumbled back, hands already coming up to cradle his face. His eyes were squinted shut so that Naruto could not see what emotion was there in them. The blond stood panting, using the lockers behind him to support his weight. His legs were shaking horrible, and he didn't trust them to hold him up._

_"What… what…" Naruto's mouth felt swollen, and his voice sounded even more garbled than Sasuke's when he was trying to learn a new pronunciation. "You fucking… you…"_

Don't

_"--You fucking _freak."

Don't

_Sasuke's eyes finally opened and Naruto had to focus on his forehead. The betrayal, the total shock, was too much to take in. Naruto felt like screaming, like crying, like finding the nearest sharp object to kill either Sasuke or himself or both. He wished he'd skipped gym today. Skipped school. He wanted to go on the roof and eat lunch with his only friend. Without even thinking about it, Naruto knew that wouldn't ever be possible. Not ever again. And for that, he was angry._

_"Stay away from me," he said, even though Sasuke hadn't moved or even made to speak. Naruto didn't want him to, either. _Don't ruin this, don't ruin this, too, let me be pissed, let me be furious, you've taken away one of the few good things in my _life _how could you, you selfish bastard, it was one thing, one small thing, you took it away, you fucking _monster_.

_Naruto stumbled away to the side. Sasuke's eyes didn't even follow him, fixed upon the spot where Naruto had been trapped against the locker. The blond realized then that Sasuke hadn't been looking at him at all. He was lost, devastated, just like Naruto. And it was his fault. _allhisfault

_Naruto turned. He wouldn't see Sasuke again for days after that. He ran._

When Sasuke stepped closer, Naruto thought he'd come all the way. He thought that he'd trap him, again, and kiss him, again, and Naruto would finally lose his mind. Should he be so afraid of a kiss? Logic told him to be disgusted, that the act should have his stomach heaving. His stomach was in turmoil, but in a different way. It was like it had been filled with helium and his whole body was alive, alert, ready to jump out of his skin.

"…do you want to?" Sasuke murmured. "To leave? Truly?"

Naruto couldn't think of a reply. All he knew was that Sasuke was seconds away form backing down, and that he should say 'yes'. Yes he wanted to leave. Yes he wanted to go back to his normal life, find a normal girl later in his teens, hang out with normal feelings. Be comfortable.

Naruto's own standard of logic was screaming that he'd never, ever been normal. Not once in his life, not for a single moment. He'd never had a sleepover, or been invited one. He never had a birthday party thrown for him. He didn't have a mom or a dad, a brother or sister, or any known living blood relative. He'd always been alone, and it made him an outsider. His whole life had been built around trying to reject that.

Yet here Sasuke stood, just as abnormal, if not more so, than Naruto. No family, in a completely foreign country, only a loose handle on the native language, no friends, no one to really talk to except for Naruto. Kissing a boy, a _boy_, when he could easily find a girl. And after he kissed that boy, he tried to keep the same boy from leaving his apartment, bearing everything of himself to him, begging him not to leave even when it was so very obvious he could do a million times better.

In reality, Sasuke was an even bigger idiot than Naruto. But he was a brave idiot. Naruto was just a coward. He was trying so hard to be normal and--

"I can't wait," Sasuke was saying, and Naruto's attention was recaptured immediately. "either you want me as I you or---leave."

Still, Naruto couldn't say anything. He usually never had a problem running his mouth, so of course, at the most critical moment, he lost his voice.

Sasuke studied Naruto's face impassively for a long, drawn-out minute. And then…

"Fine."

As Sasuke brushed past him, a distant memory licked the edges of Naruto's mind. He was aware of what an idiot he was, and the knowledge gave him confidence. Because for every stupid thing he did, there was usually something smart that came out of it. Touching a flame taught him it was hot, and to not do it again. Telling Iruka he got into another fight caused his guardian to worry, so he learned to hide it better. And fighting with Sasuke led to Naruto garnering the first real friendship of his life. Finally, he was accepted, acknowledged. And now that person, one of the precious few important people in his life, was walking away because of something stupid that Naruto had done. Something Naruto had stupidly denied him.

And he would do anything to keep it from leaving him. Because last Friday had changed everything. Because now Naruto had to risk part of himself to keep hold of something sacred, just had Sasuke had done.

_He tastes like smoke._

Sasuke fit. He was the other fucked up half to Naruto's completely disgraceful life. Two damaged pieces hardly fit together in sync, but it kept them from holding onto something pure and living with the fear of damaging it.

_Like holding a fire on the tip of my tongue._

Sasuke just fit.

Naruto felt, therefore, completely free of guilt, of blame, when he walked up to the door, yanked the door from Sasuke's grip that the taller boy had pulled open, and let it slam back into the doorframe.

But he knew he had to be held responsible when his hand fisted the collar of Sasuke's shirt and pulled. His lips slammed painfully into the edge of Sasuke's prominent cheekbone and he winced. He clamped his eyes shut tightly, followed the contours of his face, waited until he felt warm, damp breath against his mouth, and kissed him.

Yes. He had to be held accountable for that.

--

Naruto noticed that Sasuke wasn't even bothering to act under the pretense that he himself carved those into his cheeks, and a million new thoughts popped into his already crowded mind. Was he that easy to read? Was his guilt so apparent that Sasuke already knew of Naruto's sudden revelation?

_There's no way to get out of this._

_Just do it. Do it fast, quick. Fuck._

"Do you remember those guys in school, the ones who were too old to be in our grade? Older than even you?" When Sasuke frowned, Naruto elaborated, "The big black guy, the leader, the one with scars over his neck?" Sasuke nodded now. "They were hanging around your apartment building that night. I ran into them on my way home."

Sasuke's eyes narrowed. "And they did that to you?"

"They're dicks," Naruto supplied. "You can't tell me that you're surprised--"

"I'm not surprised that they'd try something like this," Sasuke cut him off. "What I'm surprised at is that you let them. Those scars are straight…" Sasuke's hand lifted, his index finger extended as if prepared to trace along one of them to prove his point. Although Naruto didn't flinch back at the moment, Sasuke's hand dropped back as if he had. "You didn't put up a fight at all." It wasn't a question.

"I did," Naruto insisted. "There were just so many of them--"

Sasuke snorted. "Stop lying to me. You let them do that to you."

"No one would let this happen to them, asshole!" Sasuke hissed, rage filtering out the breathy quality his voice had adopted throughout their conversation.

"You didn't stop them. It's the same thing."

"There's a _difference_."

"There isn't."

"Shut your fucking mouth! This isn't--not--it didn't happen to _you, _you weren't _there_, remember!?"

"Is that what this has all been about?" Sasuke said quickly, eyes flaring up again. "You've created this ridiculous story to make me feel guilty over not being there to stop some idiots from carving up your face?"

"No, that's not it! I didn't make it up--not really…"

"Well, it certainly wasn't true."

"I know that! Just give me five seconds to fucking _explain_…!"

"Yeah," Sasuke snorted. "Like what you gave me to explain, right?"

"Yes! I-I mean _no!_"

"I didn't force you out of that apartment, Naruto," Sasuke hissed. He was sitting up straight now, body tenses as if he were getting ready to stand. "You left on your own. You left _me_, not the other way around."

"God, you're so full of shit, Uchiha!" Naruto snapped. "What the fuck is wrong with your head!? You left me, you retard!"

"I did no such thing."

Naruto snapped. "California!"shouted. He was on his knees now. While sitting down, even in a hunched position, Sasuke he was still a few inched taller. Now Naruto towered over him. It didn't help anything. "Fucking _California_! I may have walked a few blocks from your fucking front door, but you flew across the God-damned country!"

Sasuke looked less angry as he replied, "That wasn't my choice, Naruto. I had no _choice_."

"I know that!" Naruto snapped. "Don't be stupid."

"I'm being stupid?" Sasuke said incredulously. "I'm not the one blaming someone for something beyond their control."

Naruto could already feel his anger quaking under the burdensome weight of guilt, again. The look on Sasuke's face was devastating. He could barely look the older man in the eye as he said, "I'm not… blaming you. I was just mad."

"Just mad?" Sasuke repeated disbelievingly. "For eight years, you were 'just mad'?"

"I was really mad," Naruto elaborated. "I was… furious. You left me alone right after you--" Naruto shook his head. Sasuke looked suspicious, like he was expecting Naruto to fling wild accusations at him again, so he plowed on, "I didn't mean to--accuse you of that stuff. I didn't."

"Yes," Sasuke sneered. "Calling me a rapist was just a cute petname. Avoiding me like the bubonic plague was your way of saying you wanted me back."

"I couldn't want you back because were never _together_!" Naruto wasn't nearly as angry as his words were making him sound. For once, his voice was louder than his mind.

"Oh? My memory tells me otherwise. And apparently, so does yours."

"Shut up, _shut up_, I didn't mean it!"

"You didn't mean to make it up? Your mind just developed its own agenda?"

"Yes! It sounds crazy, but it's true!"

"I don't buy it."

"Sasuke, _please_." _This is backwards, ass-backwards, when did we switch sides, is this how he's felt, every day, every hour, every minute, every second of every week of every month? Have I been doing this to him for _years? "You have to trust me…"

Sasuke snorted, but it was a weak sound. "Why should I?" he asked. "You don't trust me."

"I--" _I do. You're the only one I can trust. You proved that to me on the floor of your apartment where you threw me down, tore me apart, and showed me each and every sickening inch of my personality, stitched me up and left me there to bleed._

_…no._

_But that's not true, right?_

_Right?_

_You never did any of that, did you?_

_You helped me. You gave me someone, something precious, and I was too stupid to realize it had to go away. I was too stupid to put the blame on the wrong person._

_I'm sorry._

Sasuke blinked at him, stunned. Naruto had heard someone apologize, their voice weak and nearly unrecognizable. But Sasuke's lips hadn't moved, which could only mean that--

"What?" Sasuke murmured, voice disbelieving.

"I'm sorry," Naruto whispered again. "I'm so…" Naruto sank back from on his knees. "So…" He sunk back, his head hitting the wall. _Fuck._ "So sorry." _Damn it._

_God _damn _it._

For a long while, both were quiet, neither of them looking at the other. They stared at the wall, the ceiling, the floor, the window, the door. Naruto wondered if it was over now. Sasuke knew the truth, and he didn't look happy about it. In fact, he looked more upset now than their explosive reunion back in August.

"It was my fault."

The blond man looked up, mildly surprised to hear a voice after sitting in the quiet, sharing a bed in a moment far more intimate than sex. Naruto hadn't known what to expect from Sasuke, but the older man taking blame hadn't once crossed his mind. "What?" Naruto asked dully. "How is any of this your fault?"

Sasuke sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration, leaning back against the wall and staring at the ceiling. Naruto's fingers twitched at the memory, remembering when he had once done that. The clear, bright light floating in through the window was dimming the longer there not-much-of-a-conversation grew. The walls burned the color of Day-Glo, and combined with the color of Sasuke's hair, Naruto was reminded amusingly of late October.

"I don't mean the past few months," Sasuke finally said, seeming to chew on his words a bit before throwing them out. It sounded rehearsed that way, even though Naruto knew it couldn't be. "I mean that night." When Naruto didn't say anything to that, he went on, "I pushed too hard."

"You didn't," Naruto denied. "I remember… you offered to let me out. I stayed. How's that your fault?"

Sasuke shook his head. "I pressured you to stay."

"There's only so much pressure you can put on a guy," Naruto snorted. "I wasn't that weak."

Sasuke 'hmm'ed, still not looking into the other man's eyes. His eyes drifted from the ceiling and out to the window, studying the landscape instead. An acidic taste arose in Naruto's throat again, and he desperately wished for a glass of water, or a bottle of mouthwash, anything to chase that taste away. Was this what guilt tastes like, Naruto wondered. _Have I fucked it all up so badly that this is all I can feel?_

Meanwhile, it seemed that Sasuke wanted to talk about this even less than Naruto did. He wasn't asking the other any questions of his own, just offering quiet and clipped responses as if he'd heard them all already, and was now pulling answers from a memory bank.

In a brazen attempt to catch Sasuke off his guard, Naruto blurted, "Why did you move to Japan?" In his mind, the question had been, "What happened to your family?" but he edited it at last second. What plausible excuse would Naruto have for knowing even an inkling of Sasuke's past? The blond couldn't remember ever asking Sasuke about his life before coming to the United States while they were in middle school.

Still, Sasuke didn't seem all that surprised by the question. "I had to get away," he answered as if it were the most common thing in the world. "There were more opportunities for me in the States than there were in Japan."

"Oh," Naruto said. Cautiously, he asked, "Do you still have family there?"

There was a slight pause before Sasuke replied, "Yes. An older brother."

A flashback of the old newspaper clipping, of the Sasuke-esque man being dragged by officers.

"Do you ever visit him?"

It was a normal enough questions, but there was definitely a break in conversation at that. Sasuke turned to look him in the eye now, suspicion apparent in every feature of his face. "How much do you know?"

"Know what?" Naruto replied stupidly. He knew he was caught, but his lips seemed to be refusing to acknowledge that fact.

"Don't play dumb," Sasuke snapped. "What is it you know about my family?"

Naruto bit his lip, reluctant to admit that he'd been snooping around in Sasuke's past, however unintentional it had been. He was also weary of dropping Shino's name. If someone had kept a clip of something in his personal life that he'd obviously wanted hidden, he'd be pissed as hell. And Sasuke didn't seem the type to let things go.

"I've never lied to you," Sasuke said suddenly, frowning slightly. Naruto was relieved to find that the older man's words had lost their dullness. "It would be nice if you would return the favor."

Naruto scowled. He wasn't lying. That is, if one didn't count omission as a lie. Apparently Sasuke did, and unfortunately, he was the one person who mattered. So Naruto told him.

"I really couldn't understand much, it was all in Japanese," Naruto muttered. "I saw a picture of you as a kid, and the police dragging some guy who looked like--"

"Shino," Sasuke said shortly. Hesitantly, Naruto nodded. Sasuke's eyes snapped away as he snarled to the bed sheets, "I told Shino to _burn _those."

"It wasn't his fault!" Naruto said quickly. "It was just sort of… sitting there. He told me not to look through it, but--"

"Yeah, and I bet he made a real effort to hide it, too." Naruto didn't know what to say to that, so he kept quiet. A minute or so passed by before Sasuke started speaking again. "Did Shino tell you the story behind it?"

Naruto shook his head because, technically, it was true. It wasn't _Shino _that told him, so… _I'm doing it again, aren't I? I'm lying. Lying by omission. Here he is, practically spilling his guts, and I'm lying to save my own sorry ass, what kind of idiot, what kind of asshole, what kind of __**monster**__…._

"Do you want to know?"

Naruto figured that Sasuke would tell him, but he hadn't expected to be asked first. "I want to hear it," Naruto agreed, although he wasn't quite sure he wanted to. From the sound of his companion's voice, the tale was worse than the one Sakura had whispered over the café table barely hours ago. Was it that bad? Would this do even more damage to their already irreparable relationship, more so than Naruto himself had caused?

Sasuke still wasn't looking at him as he began…

--

In retrospect, Naruto knew that he should have thought this over before he'd gone on and done it. He was glad that he was so good at improvising, because after the initial first kiss, Naruto hadn't the faintest clue as to what he was supposed to do next. And Sasuke was just standing there, presumably in too much shock to do anything, so Naruto was forced to do this on his own.

His hands, unsure of whether they should grasp Sasuke's shoulders or cup his face, settled for gripping the sides of his black wife-beater. Sasuke's heavy breaths were leaking into his parted lips, tasting like sweet smoke on his tongue. His lips were slightly chapped, but that was fine, because so was Sasuke's. The skin above his lower lip was a bit prickly, the beginnings of facial hair Naruto had always wanted to try to grow. He tilted his head a bit, still awkward, and pressed his lips at a different angle. A bit of pressure, slight suction, release, and repeat. Slowly. Unsure. Until Sasuke snapped out of whatever he was in and began to kiss back.

At first, they matched each other in slowness. Sasuke seemed almost as awkward as Naruto, and he wondered if they were going to stop soon. Not hoped, not dreaded, just… wondered. But the longer their lips remained connected, the more confidence Sasuke seemed to grow. There was now a thin layer of wetness between their mouths, and Sasuke moved their faces close together. Hands were encircling Naruto's back, pressing into skin, drawing him closer. Feeling fingertips pressing into him, he pried his hands opened slowly and moved them closer, holding onto Sasuke at the waist. Sasuke's nose was cool, his lips scorching, his side a comforting mix of the two. _Well, if I'm going to do it, _Naruto figured, _I might was well do it right._

Sasuke's rhythm was getting slightly hectic. He mouthed Naruto's lips hungrily, pressing his tongue flush along the seam of Naruto's mouth before it finally split open, allowing him to access. Naruto 'hmm'ed at the back of his throat in surprise, tilting his head back a bit to suit the suddenly hungry drive behind Sasuke's movements. The new angle made it slightly hard to breathe, and his breaths were embarrassingly loud. Still, Naruto didn't draw away. Even when Sasuke took a half a step closer and Naruto could feel him against his abdomen, already hard, pressing into him in a slightly painful manner. But Naruto kept still because Sasuke was older, more hormonal people would tell him, so this was fine, this was normal. He wouldn't acknowledge the way his own belly ached, how excitement was making him slightly delirious. He couldn't afford to let go, as Sasuke had so obviously already done. Naruto couldn't begin to fathom the consequences of their both forgetting where they were, who they were, _what _they were.

And at the same time, nothing had ever sounded better.

Naruto tried to take back control of their kiss, bring it to a slower level. He tried closing his lips a bit more, to press his face to his partner's less urgently. But Sasuke would have none of it. He was moving forward, and Naruto stumbled back. His grip on Sasuke's sides suddenly became a necessity. Sasuke walked them backwards, and in Naruto's mind he pictured those scenes in the movies where the man always walked the woman back into the bedroom. He caught side of steamy fumbling before Iruka was able to find the remote and change the channel. This was exactly what this moment reminded him of, only instead of a bed, Sasuke seemed to be looking for the nearest possible solid surface to push Naruto up against. He found it at the kitchen counter. Naruto back arched as the edge of the counter pressed into the small of his back. Sasuke continued to loom forward over him, tongue still with the obvious intent of reaching Naruto's tonsils, and his hips were rubbing downwards, then pushing with a deliberate motion that finally forced the blond to react.

"Mmh!" he squeaked out. Sasuke took it as a positive sign and repeated the movement, thrusting his hips into Naruto's crotch, egged on by what he felt there. Naruto bit lightly on Sasuke's tongue, but again, Sasuke took it as the complete opposite. He moved again, and again, enough to make Naruto forget himself, forget that he was supposed to be protesting this at all. But he hung adamantly to his decision to stop, just for a moment, to clear both their heads. He twisted his head to the side and, predictably enough, Sasuke followed. Naruto did it a few more times, forcing his head this way and that, until Sasuke disengaged their mouths, heavy breaths batting Naruto in the face. Their bodies were still pressed tightly to each other, and Naruto budged the other with his shoulder, signaling without words that he needed a bit of space. Sasuke obliged, moving back a half step but keeping his arms around his torso.

"What?" Sasuke panted, eyes confused, a bit angry but more hurt. "What wrong I did?"

"Just gimmie a sec," Naruto breathed. His hands left Sasuke's sides and he used them to pry his back away from the sharp edge of the counter, then leaned on them as he gasped for breath.

Sasuke was gaining his air back faster than Naruto. "Did I doing something wrong?" he asked, his voice calm despite the faint lace of panic still in his eyes. Nervousness. Like he wasn't aware that he'd practically tried to eat Naruto's face.

"No," Naruto assured him, even though he wasn't sure that that was entirely true. They stood regaining their breath for a few moments, slowly gathering their wits and senses. But no matter how much Naruto wanted to sort out his thoughts, his desires, and his needs, they all seemed to contradict each other in a way that made it impossible for Naruto to figure out exactly what it was that he wanted.

"Naruto…"

"Mh?" Naruto lips tingled at the simple sound, and he pursed them slightly, drawing them in. The feeling made him giddy, like he'd downed an entire bag of pixie sticks.

And Sasuke, too, looked slightly exhilarated as he asked, "How much willing you to give to me?"

Naruto's eyebrows furrowed in confused. "What do you mean?"

Sasuke smirked gently. "You kissed me."

A blush fanned over Naruto's hose and cheeks, threatening to overtake his forehead and neck nest. "Yeah, so?" he challenged, sounding indignant.

"You must want it."

"Want what?"

The smirk grew a bit wider, and even though it made Naruto nervous, it was an exhilarating sort of nervous. Like exploring new territory, everything was new, and Ssauke seemed all too willing to be the tour guide.

"Let me show you."

Naruto swallowed.

_What have I started?_

"How much are you--what--"

"Shh." A rustle of cloth. The ghosting of fingertips over skin.

"H-hey…"

"You will let me try, right?

"Yeah, I said I would…."

"You said," Sasuke agreed breathily. "But you promise?"

"Promise what?" Naruto's breath hitched somewhere in his throat. Sasuke's right hand had crept under the hem of his shirt and reached to his back, gently stroking the skin there until he reached the edge of Naruto's pants.

"To let me try," Sasuke chuckled, leaning forward. He then did something he hadn't done before, and kissed the side of Naruto's neck. Naruto gasped and fought to keep from edging away, to keep his head from jerking Sasuke's away. His neck felt like far too dangerous a place for any set of teeth to be near. It was different than his mouth. Now Naruto could see him, and seeing somehow intensified it. He saw the top of Sasuke's head, it was strange, he could smell him, he breathed him in like oxygen, it was _strange_. Naruto wasn't sure yet if he liked it yet. "Promise me," Sasuke ordered. His lips attached themselves to skin. When Naruto subtly tried to move away, Sasuke began to suck gently, using his other arm to wrap around the middle of Naruto's back, drawing him in closer.

Naruto swallowed, eyes closing. There was shocking, unfamiliar shocks erupting wherever Sasuke kissed, wherever he applied the slightest bit of pressure to. It was too new, too fast, Naruto could do this, he could, he just need incentive.

Naruto swallowed again. "I promise."

_What have I started?_

--

"I was seven at the time. Itachi--my brother--he was fifteen. We lived together with our parents. We had a grandmother living with us for a time, but she passed away when I was five. We didn't have any other relatives besides an aunt and an uncle, but they were moved to America before I was even born.

"The psychiatrists I talked to, the ones who shared both my brother and my cases, told me that Itachi had a mental problem, severe schizophrenia, for a while before the incident. It never manifested itself until he was around fourteen. Until then, he was perfect. He was the golden boy at school, you could say. But when he turned fourteen, his grades began to slip a bit. Nothing drastic enough to cause alarm, just noticeable. A 'B' on a paper for a subject he normally liked. A less than perfect grade on a test. My parents just thought it was part of growing up, that he was growing other interests besides academics. But then he dropped out of the basketball team, and then out of the debate team. He stopped hanging out with his friends, and spent more time alone in his room. When it came time for summer break, his grades were slipping so badly the school was talking about setting him back a year.

"Mother and father were growing worried. They wanted to send him away, I know. I heard them talking at night. I don't know if they were talking about a boarding school or a mental facility. I just knew that by orientation for the next school year, Itachi was going somewhere else." Naruto noticed that Sasuke's hands had clenched tightly into the bed sheets. His knuckles were pressed sharply beneath the thin layer of skin, and Naruto wanted to cover it with his own to keep from seeing it shake. Or to stop it. "I didn't want him to leave. I was seven, and he was everything. My whole world.

"So I told Itachi. I told him that our parents were trying to send him away. I was little, and stupid. I didn't know what I was doing. I felt happy when Itachi told me he'd fix everything, that he wasn't going anywhere. Everything was all right for the month following that. We had our summer holidays, and he took me out a lot. To the park, to the movies. It made my parents upset, I think.

"I was seven when I came home that day. It was my first day back at school, and I wanted to go on my own. I got home around four in a hurry. I hadn't seen Itachi the day before, and neither my mother or my father said much on it. I wanted to see if he'd gotten home." Sasuke paused, and said in a voice too heavy for his youthful age, "He was."

Sasuke's hands were definitely shaking now, as was his back. His face was contorted with concentration, with anger, and such overwhelming sadness that Naruto forgot his own guilt. He was filled with the strong desire to assuage Sasuke's pain, even if it was just a little bit. He didn't cup his hand over Sasuke's. Instead, he lined it with the back of Sasuke's shoulder, right by where it met the wall. Naruto hadn't willingly touched Sasuke in years, except when it was to hit him all those weeks ago. It made him nervous, and he wondered if he'd feel the same. Solid, with cool skin, so real beneath his palm. Naruto cupped the back of his shoulder gently, applying slight pressure. The shaking stopped, surprising Naruto enough to give him the confidence to add more pressure, rubbing in small circles, massaging out the tension.

Sasuke went on.

"He told me it was all for me," Sasuke said. "He hugged me. I could smell copper. I'd--never seen so much blood. Not even in movies. He'd used a knife, and--" He stopped, and Naruto began to run his hand up and down his arm. Sasuke was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and eventually their skin made contact. Sasuke's arms were cool to the touch. Or was his own hand just too hot?

"Itachi said that they'd been trying to tear us apart so that they could hurt me. He said he had to protect me. He had to…" Sasuke broke off the line of thought. A moment later, he said, "He's still in Japan, in the same psychiatric ward as he was when he was fifteen."

When Sasuke refused to go on, Naruto attentively asked, "What happened to you?"

Sasuke seemed slightly calmer as he said, "They sent me to a mental hospital, too. I was released when I was eleven, and went to live with the guardian named in my father's will. I was set back a few years in school, even though they had a small educational program in the ward. But school didn't work. I couldn't get along with anyone. I was starting fights every day. Eventually, my guardian pulled me out and hired a home tutor. But still… I was miserable. Everything reminded me of home.

"I was subjected to a visit to a psychiatrist three times a week for a year, and then once a week for another two. When I was fourteen, I was visiting one a month, and when I was sixteen, they took me off the medications. But nothing had helped. I was still angry." Sasuke broke off again. "I'm still angry," he finished.

"And you moved here…?" Naruto pressed, eager for a happier conclusion then that. He hadn't stopped rubbing Sasuke's arm. However horrifying, the moment was still rather intimate, comfortable in the closeness of their bodies. He could smell the scent of the soap Sasuke used, and he knew that must be how his hand smelled like now.

"My guardian is a teacher," Sasuke said. "In America, more and more public schools were offering Japanese as a second language. There was a teacher in a school who was friends with my guardian, and who knew about me. He offered him a job in the States. He said it would be good for me, for a complete change of scenery."

"And your guardian agreed?"

"Yes."

"And was it better?"

Sasuke shrugged. "I met you," he said simply, obviously leaving it open to interpretation.

And then, for the first time since he'd begun his story, Sasuke looked up to meet Naruto's gaze. His hand stopped moving. His blood chilled in his veins as time around him hit the emergency break, momentum causing his insides to jerk. One large, electric pulse seemed to flow through him. The hairs on his arms, his legs, the back of his neck, stood at attention. His skin prickled. His mouth was dry in a matter of seconds.

Because, finally with three simple words, Sasuke made him understand.

It hit Naruto with the weight an eighteen-wheeler would carry. Everything suddenly made sense. The reason Sasuke kept Naruto at an insultingly large emotional distance at school while continuously trailing him closer than his own shadow. Kissing Naruto in the locker room without sense or hesitation, then allowing Naruto to run away. Waiting until the last minute to tell Naruto his intentions of leaving, if only to keep them connected a few days longer. The reason why Sasuke, for the past several months, had given Naruto all the space he so obviously desired. The reason he'd somewhat humored Naruto's wild and unfounded accusations.

Because Sasuke, behind eyes colder than ice, words more bitter than lemon concentrate, attitude as bored and aloof as a sloth, was deeply afraid of loss. And if what he said was true--if everything he said was true--

_"I've never lied to you."_

_"I love you."_

Could Naruto bank everything, his future and his past, on a promise made by a man as mentally unstable, if not more so, than he himself was?

"Sasuke," Naruto murmured. "You told me once that I didn't trust anyone around me. Not even Iruka." _Can I really gamble my life away on a whim? _"Why did you say that?"

--

"Stay still."

"I can't." Naruto continued to squirm. His breath came in short spurts, and the tingling sensations erupting through his body helped with nothing. At this point, even a gentle stroke across the back of his hand would put him in danger of heart failure. His body was attempting to rapidly desensitize itself to Sasuke's touch, but no matter how gentle Sasuke's warms lips were as they mouthed the juncture between his neck and shoulder, his head still reacted by twisting towards Sasuke, minimizing the space the older boy could access.

"Close your eyes."

"I can't!"

"_Try_."

"I am, trying, you bastard! I just can't keep them closed!" Sasuke shrunk back slightly. Naruto lay propped up on his elbows on the floor, refusing to lay fully on his back, and it was making his joints ache at the constant pressure. Sasuke's legs were spread wide and straddling his lap, the jean stretched tightly over him in a way that made Naruto's stomach revolt against the rest of him, his blood boiling in his veins.

Now Sasuke was drawing back fully so that he could sit up straight, towering over Naruto. The blond propped himself up a bit further, half ecstatic and half devastated that Sasuke had finally stopped. Being touched hadn't been the least bit comfortable. It was awkward and new and he didn't like it. But what made his uniform slacks feel uncomfortable and tight was the mere idea of it. That this was new, that attention was focused solely on him, and Sasuke was looking at him in a way he never thought anyone, male or female, would ever look at him.

Then Sasuke's hand slid to the hem of his black wife-beater, and he was peeling it off.

"The Hell are you doing!?" Naruto yelped, already trying to scoot back. He'd seen the naked torsos of other boys in the locker room all the time, but this felt different. This was too close to his face, too intimate, and the fact that it was _meant _to be intimate just made the whole matter worse.

Instead of answering, or even throwing his shirt down, Sasuke lay it horizontally over Naruto's heaving chest. And, oddly enough, he began to fold it.

"What… are you doing?"

Again, Sasuke didn't answer. He continued to fold until he had a long, rectangular piece of cloth four inches wide. Sasuke then picked it up, one hand grasping each end, and holding it up for Naruto to see clearly.

Naruto raised an eyebrow. "Teaching me origami now, Uchiha?"

Sasuke scowled, and Naruto noticed how when he sighed in frustration, the hollow beneath his ribs heaved slightly and for a moment, he looked normal. Then he was back to skeletal thin, and Naruto found himself keeping his eyes away from Sasuke's chest due to pity instead of nerves.

"I knot around your eyes."

_No. _"No."

"Come on," Sasuke snapped. "You not keep them close. This will help."

"_No!_"

"Then keep them close yourself."

"I can't," Naruto sighed. He shuffled on his arms, and made to sit up. "This isn't working, Sasuke."

"It would if you agree to--"

"No! I said I'd try and I did! Now get off!'

"You are not trying!" Sasuke insisted, leaning down closer, causing Naruto to lower himself painfully to the carpet.

"I am! I'm just pretty damn sure you're not supposed to jump to all this shit on the first day!" Naruto scowled. "I don't wanna sound like a girl, but--"

"Well you do," Sasuke remarked coldly, no apology for the comment shining in his suddenly angered black eyes. "You didn't say you try. You promise."

Naruto forgot what it was that he'd been planning to say. _You promise_. That was a low blow. Naruto knew that as a fourteen-year-old, it was slightly ridiculous to stand on such high moral ground, but that didn't stop the fact that he did. On some level, he knew that Sasuke's pressuring punctuated nearly every law of morality he lived by, but that was Sasuke's choice. _You promise_. He'd never told his friend about his ethics, about his refusal to break even the smallest of promises. _You promise. _Somehow Sasuke knew, and somehow, he found it right to use that to his advantage. _You promise._

"You promise," Sasuke repeated, smelling an easy victory. "You promise."

"I know," Naruto murmured. "But I--"

"Don't you trust me?" Sasuke asked, changing tactics. "You must."

"I don't know if I do," Naruto admitted, scooting back an inch or two, surprised when Sasuke allowed it.

"You must. You don't trust anyone other."

"Who the Hell says I don't, huh?" Naruto barked, surprised by Sasuke's confidence.

"Because I know you," Sasuke said. "You talk to no one at school. You talk to me."

"That just means I think you're less shitty than anyone else," Naruto said, which was partly true. Sasuke was indeed more bearable than anyone else, but he refused to admit that there was reason beyond that. Unfortunately, Sasuke already appeared to know that he was lying by omission.

"Explain why you follow me then."

"'Follow' you!? You're the one who follows _me _you freaking nut job--"

"And Iruka," Sasuke continued. "You don't trust him neither."

Shocked that anyone who'd known him for more than a twenty-four hour period would say anything like that, Naruto said, "Now you're just making shit up. If I'd trust anyone, I'd trust him."

"But you don't," Sasuke insisted. "If you did, would he know about us?"

"What about us? We're just friends who fight more than get along. Nothing else to know." Naruto finally took notice that Sasuke had put down his pell-mell blindfold, and was now leaning forward, using one arm to prop himself up and the free hand to gently cup the side of Naruto's head. Naruto felt the coolness of his fingertips through his hair, and wondered if his hands were equally as cold.

"I think this," Sasuke murmured, his voice gone from painfully insistent to deep and husky in an impossibly short amount of time, "is more than friends."

"No," Naruto lied. "It's you trying to make it something more."

"You kissed me."

"You started it."

"Don't be child. It's not a fight going back and forth. You kissed _me_."

"That was a mistake."

"It wasn't. Stop pretend that it is."

"I'm not pretending, bastard! It was a… in the moment kind of thing…" Naruto ended lamely.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed into thin strips of shiny obsidian. "Then have another moment now."

"You can't make moments, moron. They just happen."

Sasuke snorted. "You sound such like a girl, Uzumaki."

"Fuck off, pretty boy."

Sasuke sighed, and Naruto though that his diversion tactics had worked. He was yanked back into reality when Sasuke said, his voice so small and unlike him Naruto felt unreasonably guilty, "You kissed me."

"I already said it was a mistake."

"And you let me try all this…" Sasuke's voice was disbelieving and accusing, but somehow, Naruto saw through it as easily as looking through a window. His strong façade was cracking, and although this should be reason for celebration, all Naruto felt was a horrible, sweltering wave of guilt. Naruto hadn't noticed it before, but now he did. Sasuke's hand slid from his hair like it had died. Flopping down lifelessly to hang by the owner's side. Sasuke's broad shoulders were sagging with his confidence, and Naruto felt the foreign need to run his hands along them, massage between his shoulder blades, lift them up again.

Although Naruto knew that an apology would be what best suited the situation, he couldn't bring himself to utter the two simple words. He didn't try to move himself back any further. Sasuke was half naked, and he himself felt like he'd been stripped of even his skin. The mood was gone, and now it was awkward, and their breathing was too loud in the silent apartment.

"Make no sense," Sasuke muttered, and Naruto could feel an easy victory. The conversation was drawing to a close, and he could leave here with his mind and body still in one piece. A little dented, but fine. He could go home

_Let him go?_

return to school

_Let him _go_?_

and back to the life he had before Sasuke stepped off the plane and into this country, ruining it all.

_No._

"Yeah, well, Iruka always said love didn't make sense." Naruto was positive his voice has that tone of finality in it, the one he always heard in the principal's voice when he dismissed Naruto from his office. However awkward it was, it would be even worse if Naruto remained sitting there. He made to move further back, expecting Sasuke to relent and let him up.

He was very wrong.

Naruto wondered briefly if he had jinxed himself earlier, when he found himself wishing that Sasuke would lose his hunched stature. His shoulders were broad and proud once again, his hands, still cold, tight as they gripped Naruto's shoulders and pushed the blond harshly back onto the floor. Unfortunately, he'd been moving too far back, and a splitting pain exploded like fireworks as his head cracked loudly against the wooden siding of the counter.

"_Ouch! _Fucking--_fuck_, Uchiha, what the hell is yo--" The rest of his angry words were cut off as Sasuke's hand cupped itself over his mouth, cutting off all sound. "Mmf!"

Sasuke's face loomed not but an inch from him, now. Black eyes were his entire world, a thin border of pale skin outlining it. Naruto could smell his breath as it fanned across his face, and it was all at once familiar and frightening. Calming and enough to make his blood boil in his veins. Their noses touched and he thought he might fall victim to a heart attack.

When Sasuke spoke, Naruto had to beat down his anger long enough to focus on the softly spoken words, as quiet and deadly as the first tower of smoke signaling a fire. "'Love'?" the raven-haired man hissed, and at once, Naruto knew his mistake. His hands gripped Sasuke's wrist and tried to pull the hand away from his mouth, but Sasuke just pressed harder, causing his tender skull to press painfully into the floor. Eyes watering with pain, Naruto tightened his grip, but kept a light hold on Sasuke's wrist.

"Do you love me, Naruto?"

His head hurt too much to move it far, so he settled with a twitch of his head to the right and a glare that clearly spelled out immanent death.

"You speak it."

Naruto tried to say something, and Sasuke's fingers tightened. He wondered if he'd have finger-shaped bruises across his cheekbones by morning.

"You speak it, not me," Sasuke repeated. Gently, he moved his head to trace the contour of Naruto's cheek with the tip of his nose. The younger boy was too enraged, too confused, too frightened to struggle away from it. Sasuke's free hand had come up to cup the side of his neck while his nose buried itself into Naruto's hair. The blond froze, curious despite himself, waiting for Sasuke to make his next move.

"You love me," Sasuke concluded with so much confidence that Naruto felt as if he were in vertigo, everything upside down, his whole mind spinning. He could smell Sasuke's skin. His drunken mind wondered what it would taste like. Sasuke pulled back to look Naruto in the eye. He repeated those three words again, this time in a stronger and slightly pleading tone, as if he were trying to convince Naruto of it this time. Naruto tried to tell him it was a slip of tongue, but that would just prove Sasuke's point. He wanted to say it was a mistake, but he'd said that so many times that even he wouldn't believe himself. Naruto had no way to deny it that made any sense, and for a split second, after Sasuke repeated it for a third time ("_You love me"_)--_he wins--_Naruto believed it. Naruto believed he loved him. In that split second, all he saw was pain. Insurmountable amounts of pain that would come with loving a man, especially a man like Sasuke. Did he even know what love was--_I love you?--_at fourteen? When would he begin to understand--_You love me--he wins--_was there an age limit? When would he understand?

All in the span of a split second. It was enough to change the look in Naruto's eyes, even if for a moment, and Sasuke grabbed onto that, holding it like his only lifeline. Still refusing to Naruto speak, he said, "You will try." His other hand, that had been idly stroking Naruto's neck, now left and picked up the discarded t-shirt. He one-handedly lay it across Naruto's chest and fixed the once-neat folds. When he was done, he held it up, like he'd done earlier.

"Try," Sasuke ordered. "For me. Your promise."

And, to Naruto's surprise, Sasuke released his mouth. To his even greater surprise, Naruto couldn't think of anything to say. Sasuke drew back and held the blindfold up again.

"The only thing to bother you is my gender," Sasuke said. "So forget it."

It was a fairly large thing to ignore. Naruto almost said it, but he was still struck mute by his involuntary admission--lie, lie, it was _a lie_--and Sasuke's reaction to it.

Taking Naruto's silence as permission, Sasuke began to creep forward with the blindfold. When the fabric brushed over the bridge of Naruto's nose, he imagined that it was still warm from Sasuke's body heat, and he flinched back. It wasn't far enough to deter Sasuke, who moved faster this time. He slid it over Naruto's eyes, and instantly, everything was black. Still, Naruto remained immobilized as Sasuke swiftly tied it into a tight knot at the back of his head. The twist of it lay several inches below the lump on his scalp from where his head had ht the counter, yet it ached all the same.

There was quiet. Naruto studied the darkness closely. He knew that there was some dark fabric as easy to see through as fishnet, but the wife-beater proved to be too thick from its many folds to make out even a flicker of movement. Sasuke shifted, and the weight on his abdomen subsided slightly. Still, Naruto's heartbeat quickened, and he knew his breaths were falling even faster. He failed to see how cutting off one sense would help. Sure he couldn't see him, but he could _feel _him, a sense amplified now that his sight was lost. Besides his pounding heart, he could hear the slight shuffle of clothes as Sasuke shifted. He wondered what it was, exactly, that he was doing.

When something warm touched his lips, at first Naruto couldn't register what it was. The touch was tentative, with only the slightest pressure, before moving to gently mouth his lower lip. It took several moments for Naruto to realize that Sasuke was kissing him again. There were two hands at his shoulders, rubbing them softly, before moving from them to his neck and caressing that.

It felt odd. Even though he could see nothing, the fact that his eyes were open made it feel wrong, somehow. So he closed them, and instantly the darkness become soothing as opposed to frightening. Slowly he mirrored Sasuke's movements. When he felt Sasuke's head tilt to the right, he moved to accommodate that. When Sasuke gently bit into his top lip, Naruto focused on the bottom. When something smoothed along the seam of his mouth, something that send rivers of fire streaming downwards, he met it with a tiny lick of his own. When Sasuke coaxed his mouth open, he let him, and their tongues slid slowly along each other. Naruto shifted his body, his face was on fire, it was an embarrassing reaction but he was fourteen and--

There was a gentle tug, then release, on his shirt. The feeling of Sasuke's calloused fingertips had left the skin of his neck, and when there was a second tug on his shirt, Naruto realized he was unbuttoning it. This didn't bother Naruto as much as he knew it should have. It felt a bit like Sasuke was evening the playing field. If the raven-haired boy was shirtless, why wasn't he? It wasn't like he'd never been shirtless around another male before. The situation in which he was shirtless, however, bothered him very much. It was comfortable with Sasuke. If it had been a girl in his class, Naruto would look for the nearest desk to hide himself under. But this was Sasuke, another boy, and it felt perfectly fine. It felt almost normal the way that Sasuke pushed the school shirt off of his shoulders. It was only natural that Naruto should lean up and shrug the article of clothing off. Was this right? The way he'd been taught told him it should have been a girl, a woman here, with him. But that would make him uncomfortable. The way he'd been taught told him another boy, another man, doing this to him was the darkest sin imaginable. Yet it was as comfortable and easy as breathing. Was something wrong here? Was there something wrong with _him_?

Sasuke's mouth was gone suddenly, and Naruto drew in a deep breath of air he hadn't known he needed so much. Sasuke's hand were at his sides, urging him up. Naruto obliged, lifting his arms slightly and allowing Sasuke to pull the undershirt over his head. The blond hovered awkwardly for a moment before gentle hands were pushing at his shoulders, pressing him down once again. Sasuke settled himself more comfortably over Naruto's hips, and the blond could feel him through the older boy's jeans, through his slacks, and he wondered how far Sasuke was planning on taking this before one of them chickened out. It didn't seem like Sasuke was willing to back down, so it was a matter of Naruto deciding if he was more frightened, more aroused, or more stubborn to keep his promise.

It was a dangerous game of chicken, Naruto decided. Sasuke undid the belt buckle on his pants. _We're both on motorcycles_. Sasuke jerked at the zipper, pulling it downwards. _On a narrow, rickety bridge_. Sasuke looped his hand not into Naruto's slacks, but his boxers as well, pulling. The blond felt the cloth shift. He gulped. _Over a sea of liquid lava._

_Who will cave first?_

Naruto was determined not to be the one who gave in. People did this all the time, he reasoned. And Sasuke seemed to know what he was doing. There was a hand stroking his clothed thigh, and his leg twitched with the effort to keep it still. Sasuke's hand just kept on climbing _higher_. And although Naruto knew that those hands were rough with calluses, connected to arms taught with muscle, and although his pride begged to differ, Naruto was slowly beginning to lose himself. It was like slipping from the real world to a daydream in the middle of class. Everything took on a calmer, more surreal quality, without actually changing anything. Sasuke had shifted his hips down and pressed gently into Naruto's, aligning both their arousals. Naruto didn't buck up or react when Sasuke repeated the motion, grinding downwards a bit harder. But he didn't stop it, either. Nor did he feel an ounce of disgust, of relief. He didn't stop to think that the blindfold was working, because if he did, it would all be ruined.

Naruto didn't want this to be ruined. It felt good. Sasuke was warm and real above him, taking control in such a perfectly uncontrolled away. Naruto let him push his pants out of the way, and felt Sasuke pull back to shimmy out of his jeans.

_Bare skin._

It felt good.

They began to sweat soon after that. Naruto shifted his legs and kicked his feet out of his slacks. Because he felt stupid to have them on, he also toed out of his socks. When his feet were bare, he slowly ran them down the length of Sasuke's calves. There were hands touching him, around his hips, the small of his back, stroking the insides of his thighs repeatedly--

_That's all right, it's all right, because I'm touching him too._

It started slowly. Naruto didn't think he could, but he did. Because just for ten minutes, or even five, Naruto wanted to feel good. The building pressure, the pleasure as a rough and hot hand gently took hold of him and squeezed, was all too wrong for words, but he couldn't stop. He now understood what it meant to be caught up in the heat of a moment. And what a heat it was. Hot, fumbling.

The carpet was rough.

Sweat made their fingers slide and stick.

Awkward angles as their hands found each other and jerked.

Moaning, then quieter sounds, because they thought they were being too loud.

Too inexperienced, too rough, too _fast._

_It feels good._

_Don't stop._

_Please. Please._

_**Don't go.**_

Sasuke bent his head lower and began to lick at his neck, lips roaming confidently over the skin there, raising marks that would no doubt be purple by the morning.. When the raven-haired boy leaned back down for another heated kiss, he rearranged his body to fit it better along Naruto's, lower. Naruto's arm stretched, and Sasuke batted his hand away. Took a hold of both of them, squeezed, grinded, _oh_. When he drew his tongue back out to play, he took the chance to grind his hips down hard. Even with his mouth covered, Naruto's yelp was loud in the silently dimming room to break their unspoken treaty to keep things quiet as possible. Sasuke repeated the motion, drawing quiet grunts, drawn out moans.

As the moments drew on, the kiss grew sloppier, and Sasuke's movements become more sporadic. He went from slow, long, powerful grinds to quick and inexperienced ones, shaking them both, causing Naruto to cry out. Air became hard to find and at some point they broke apart. Sasuke instantly latched his mouth onto Naruto's neck again, biting and lapping at the flesh until Naruto, dizzy from the sweet pain of it, returned the favor. To leave dark marks in the skin as white as snow. Sasuke sucked at small patches behind his ears before quickly running his tongue across Naruto's chin, then down to the hollow at the base of his throat, all the while creating unrelated rhythms that the blond made his best attempts to follow, raising his hips, spreading his legs, trying to find footing. The unrelenting friction combined with the utter helplessness of the darkness--_let him have it, give him control, it feels good, lose responsibility, he wants it, he can have it, it feels good_--intensified the cravings, and he could feel the scorching heat threaten to burn and char the skin right off his bones.. Their chests, slick with sweat, slid together, making wet noises to match that of Sasuke's tongue as it circled his throat.

An epiphany came to him as Sasuke bit particularly hard on the juncture between his neck and shoulder. Naruto knew who he was. With his hands he knew he'd just memorize nearly every inch of him from the hips up. He ran one hand messily over Sasuke's moving jaw, then over his face, following the gentle slope of his nose, then downwards to his panting lips. Sasuke captured a finger in his mouth, sucking it in, circling it with his tongue and Naruto moaned as his partner let go, now licking at the web between his fingers. The roughness of his hands was oddly welcoming. The erection rubbing against his own wasn't awkward, just a mirror image of his own need, and comforting in that they were the same, no secret places on the body they had to work around or discover. It was comforting to know what they both wanted, and how to get it with no inhibitions.

The knot of his blindfold dug into the back of his head. Naruto maneuvered it to rub downwards on the carpet, arching his neck. The cloth wouldn't shift, but he hadn't expected it to. He expected Sasuke to understand.

Pale hands were fumbling behind him in an instant--_yes, yes--_and the cloth was gone. The room was dim, and it was wonderful to be able to fully open his eyes without pain. Sasuke was staring down at him like he was the last person on earth, eyes earnest and open in his flushed face. Panting. Lips swollen after trying to swallow Naruto whole. For the second time that day, Naruto initiated the kiss. With both hands he tangled his fingers into Sasuke's hair, feeling how hot it was, silk woven with threads of flame.

Naruto found his peak before Sasuke, crashing himself upwards one last time before collapsing. Liquid warmth soiled their stomachs, causing their skin to make an odd sucking noise as they moved together. His eyes tightened shut as he rode out the last waves of his orgasm and waited for Sasuke to still above him. The boy continued to move as if possessed for ten more grueling seconds, in which the mind-altering realization of what he'd just participated in came crawling back before Sasuke grunted and smashed himself downwards, suffocating Naruto with the smell of him, the feel of muscle as hard and unrelenting as iron. His fingers dug into sharp hipbones and he gave small, erratic thrusts as he enjoyed the white hot sensation of it.

White hot.

It wasn't white. It wasn't blinding. His orgasm didn't bring the that bright light his previous attempts at masturbation had brought him. This one was shared, and different somehow. It was intoxicatingly pleasurable, and left Naruto gasping, mind thoroughly blinded by it. It was almost… the color blinding his sight, the color he saw when he closed his eyes was….

They lay there for a while, Sasuke on top of him, their bodies crushed tightly together, gathering strength. Their rest probably lasted longer than the actual act. After a while, though, Sasuke grunted and rolled off of him. Suddenly, breathing wasn't such a burden anymore.

"Are you fine?" Sasuke murmured. There was no hesitance in the thickly accented voice, which was comforting. Sasuke was treating this like a normal thing. No matter how extraordinary it had been, it was good to know that on some level, at least the two of them could take it in strike.

"I'm fine," Naruto assured him in a weak voice, resisting the urge to make a sarcastic comment. This didn't seem the time.

"How about a drink?" Sasuke asked. "I can get you a drink, if you wish."

"Y-yeah," Naruto stuttered. "Thanks."

Sasuke slowly stood up, and Naruto's eyes followed the taller boy as he padded softly to the kitchen. His movements were deliberate and fluid, like a women. He was certainly more graceful than Naruto ever had the chance of being. He fetched a cup from the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap. When it was halfway full, he brought it back. Sasuke sat down slowly, but not like he was afraid of scaring Naruto with sudden movements. He seemed sated, content, and he watched Naruto take a long drink with lazy eyes and a small smile on his lips.

When Naruto had drained the cup, Sasuke took it from him and set it on the kitchen's tiled floor. He promptly lay back down beside Naruto, wrapping an arm around his waist and tugging him so that they lay side-by-side.

Naruto snorted good-naturedly. "Should we go find a couch or something?"

"Nnh," Sasuke hummed, burying his nose into Naruto's neck. "Are you uncomfortable."

Naruto thought about it for a moment. "Not really," he replied. To prove it, he lifted his left leg and draped it over Sasuke's, bringing them closer. The semen and sweat drying on their bodies felt odd, but the way Sasuke smiled into the skin of his shoulder made up for it.

_It feels good._

Sasuke kissed the side of his neck.

_Don't go._

--

Sasuke looked like he didn't quite know how to answer that question. Although Naruto had seen Sasuke surprised before, this was different. Sasuke looked deeply unsettled, and the blond's stomach sunk when he noticed that peculiar emotion flash through Sasuke's eyes once again. It made Naruto's chest hurt, his heart beating too loudly in his ribcage. He hated that looked. He had no idea what it was, he still didn't, but he despised it with every fiber of his being.

"I told you that," Sasuke murmured, "because you were only unhappy around me."

Naruto blinked. "How does misery equal trust in your books?"

"Because you _were _miserable," Sasuke informed him. "Every day I worried you wouldn't show up at school. And every day you did, smiling at everyone and everything… except for me. Not even for Iruka would you drop that stupid little mask of yours." Sasuke's face fell. "Except for me. With me, you were honest. Brutally so. And I don't know why that was. I figured it was because I couldn't understand half of what you were saying. Or maybe because I hated the children in that school just as mush as you did. Whatever the reason, you didn't pretend for me." Sasuke tilted his head to the side, as if asking a question. "That, to me, is trust."

_What is it to me?_

_What is trust?_

_Is this trust? _

"And I knew… because I trusted you."

_This is trust._

_Is this love?_

Sasuke eyes him levelly. His black eyes were warm, alive, even after all he'd been subjected to.

_Yes. It is._

Naruto smiled.

_Can I fix this?_

_I can try._

_I promise._

--

Naruto dug his face deeply into the crook of Sasuke's neck, breathing it in. He couldn't tell if it was cologne or shampoo he was smelling, but whatever it was, it smelled nice. He couldn't get enough of it. Naruto's lips attached themselves below Sasuke's hears, sucking in at the skin and biting the flesh that was trapped between his teeth. He wasn't sure if he was being too rough or too gentle, but Sasuke didn't seem to mind, what with the way his breath hitched every time Naruto bit down, groaning softly when the blond laved at the bite marks with his tongue.

He now had a fairly good idea of what sex smelled like. Whenever he pulled back from Sasuke's neck he caught a whiff of musk, combined with the tangy odor of their mingled sweat. It was unlike anything he'd ever smelled, and although it wasn't entirely pleasant, Naruto couldn't bring himself to mind it. It seemed right; an awkward smell to go along with awkward post-bliss. Sasuke, however, seemed to be rewinding instead of moving forward to a point where they'd finally break apart. The older boy's hands were still sticky as the trailed over Naruto's calf, still slung over his hip, over his abdomen, still shining, still hot. The hand on his leg trailed up, over his hip, traveling in the dip of his pelvic for a brief moment of time, making Naruto shudder and shift away at the abrupt tickling sensation. As fast as it was moving, however, was as fast as it disappeared.

Naruto felt Sasuke's arm reach across him and he pulled back to give his partner a curious look. Sasuke just shook his head and leaned forward to mesh their lips together. This was fine by Naruto. Kissing was what had started all this, before they'd covered more bases in an hour than any normal couple should in half a year. Kissing was like the base of an experiment. Never changing, always there to measure things up against, to decide how far outside of Naruto's comfort zone Sasuke was planning on taking them next.

A new scent reached Naruto's nostrils, and for a while, he was confused. It was definitely familiar, but so very out of context that he couldn't name it. Sasuke was fumbling with something behind him, but he was keeping Naruto's mouth too busy for the blond to figure out what it was. After a few moments, the movement stopped, and the side of Sasuke's hand was gently smoothing over Naruto's backside.

The younger boy flinched minutely out of surprise, but forced his jumping nerves to calm down. His body was tired, but already his hormones were racing. He didn't know what to blame for that; his age, or Sasuke.

Naruto broke away from the kiss suddenly, leaving Sasuke to momentarily mouth air. The hand that had been tracing the contours of his rear had slipped down, to a more intimate place, sliding up and between Naruto's legs, searching with damp fingertips. The smoothness of the substance as it was accidentally smeared on his skin alerted him to what it really was. _Is that…?_

"Sasuke," Naruto panted, dodging Sasuke's lips when he leaned in for another kiss, obviously keen on distracting the younger boy. "What the fuck are you doing with _oil_?"

Sasuke shushed him. The hand continued to slide, and Naruto's face flushed a humiliated crimson when he felt the slippery fingers slide into the crevice of his ass. He was pressing at Sasuke's chest now, trying to inch backwards. But Sasuke had leaned up to free the arm he was laying it on, snaking it under Naruto's head to circle around his shoulders to simultaneously massage the stress away and to keep him from freeing himself.

"Relax," Sasuke reprimanded. "It feel good if you relax."

"I don't wanna relax!" Naruto snapped childishly. "What is it you're trying to do now?"

Sasuke sighed in frustration. "_Dobe_," he hissed, "have I lied about it feeling good yet? For anything?"

Naruto bit his lip. Sasuke was right. Although not everything had necessarily gone smoothly, and certain things felt wrong for a while, it had felt _good_. And at least for now, the barrier between genders had been demolished. None of the girls in the world mattered because Naruto wasn't part of that world. He was in Sasuke's apartment, Sasuke's world, Sasuke's rules and his home. And if said it was all right, and Naruto said it was all right, then it was fine. This would be fine too.

Naruto nodded lightly. Winced at the slight pressure, gasped when something gave way in a manner he felt almost certain wasn't meant to be. But he allowed it. Naruto buried his face into the skin of Sasuke's neck, kissed it lightly. Winced when the finger slid in further. Sasuke shushed him to relax once again, and Naruto bit his neck harder than he had before, feeling Sasuke's wince. That shut him and his stupid cooing up.

The finger slid in further, Naruto wincing. He could feel it moving inside, and it made his insides squirm with discomfort. It didn't hurt, but the foreign pressure bellied the desire that had previously held residence as top emotion in his body. "This," he muttered, gulping when the intrusion grew deeper. "This feels weird," he finished lamely. Then he gasped. Sasuke was sliding his finger out, the motion of that odd as well, before sliding it back in.

"It feel better," Sasuke promised. "Have patience."

Naruto tried. He licked at Sasuke's neck some more, distracting himself with the pleasant salty taste it left on his tongue. His body, although tired from its orgasm, was beginning to burn again. Naruto didn't know if he wanted that to happen again so soon. The feeling of it was uncomfortably intimate, which was part of what made it so enjoyable. Naruto shut his eyes, giving up and resting his head against Sasuke's shoulder, reveling in the feel of it.

"You don't have to do this," Naruto panted. "I'm fine. Really. Ah! W-wait, hold on!"

Sasuke was rolling them over now so that Naruto lay on his back, legs spread so that the raven-haired boy could slide between them. Sasuke's free hand was lifting his leg, settling it over his hip so that the other hand could have better access. Naruto bit his lip, heart thundering in his chest. Sasuke just chuckled, the smirk on his face revealing his amusement.

"Keep on laughing!" Naruto snapped. "Wait until I cram my fucking fingers up your--your--" Sasuke laughed again, and Naruto scowled, turning his face away.

"Deeper?" Sasuke questioned lightly, obviously enjoying himself. Naruto shook his head 'no', but Sasuke ignored him, moving them in even further.

"Slower," Naruto provided. He felt like the wind was constantly being knocked from his lungs, and he couldn't catch enough of it. "Do you understand _'slow' _you asshole?"

Sasuke did understand, and he obeyed. The slightly pain was sharp, but added to the alien pleasure of it. He groaned softly as they brushed along a different spot of him. His hips arched again, this time to take them in further. Sasuke's smirk turned into a triumphant one, and Naruto was too distracted to notice the ominous confidence creeping into his smile.

"Naruto?" he asked softly. Naruto's eyes flickered to attention. "Does it feel good?" The fingertips brushed a spot inside of him, the same spot as before, and Naruto 'ahh'ed softly. He nodded his head once, although that was all his pride would allow him. "I never lied, correct?" Sasuke pushed. "About what would feel good." Again, Naruto just shook his head once, forgoing his pride for more of the shockingly good sensations. His hips rose in rhythm to Sasuke's hand, something that made the older boy's smirk grow a bit wider. "Then would you be allowing me to try something new?"

Naruto grunted, the noise neither approval or refusal. He wasn't sure he wanted anything else. This was more than sufficient. It was even better than the hand job he'd received earlier. But Sasuke was adamant in getting an answer. The fingers slid free of Naruto's body, and Naruto whined in disapproval. "Hey!"

"An answer," Sasuke ordered, black eyes looking down at Naruto in amusement.

Still breathing heavily, Naruto asked, "What is it you want to try?"

Sasuke shook his head. "Just answer me."

"Not until you tell me what it is," Naruto reasoned.

"Do you trust me?"

"Well, yeah, or else I wouldn't have let you--"

"And I not lied about what felt good, ne?"

Naruto fidgeted nervously. "Yeah, but--"

"Don't worry," Sasuke murmured. "I know what to do."

Naruto still didn't answer. He was still aroused, and he knew that Sasuke could feel it. In turn, he felt Sasuke press heatedly into his abdomen. So far, whatever they'd done so far had done something for both of them. Naruto couldn't figure out what it was that Sasuke thought they could do.

"All right…" Naruto said reluctantly.

"You promise?"

That sent alarms off in Naruto's head. Even though the last promise had turned out to work in Naruto's favor, it had been over something Sasuke knew he wouldn't be able to do unless he brought Naruto's unbendable morale into the deal. "Why should I?" Naruto challenged.

Sasuke shrugged, then smirked. "So you won't chicken out me, of course."

"Should I want to?"

"Only if you're cowardice."

Naruto narrowed his eyes. "Stop taking advantage of me!" he snapped.

Sasuke rolled his eyes, looking frustrated. "Don't be such a woman, _dobe_."

"I'm not a girl!" Naruto snapped, but then sighed, knowing that Sasuke had him cornered. "Fine. I _promise_."

Sasuke smiled. He didn't smirk, or sneer, but _smiled_. It was only a small tilt at the sides of his lips, but Naruto felt it was worth the dangerous deal just to see what was probably a once-in-a-lifetime thing. "Thank you."

"Tch, whatever," Naruto murmured, turning his head to the side, waiting. "Well?"

"Close your eyes."

"No."

"Don't be stubborn again. Just do it."

"_Why_?"

"Just trust me."

Naruto snorted. "Eventually you're gonna get tired of playing that card," he said. Nevertheless, he closed his eyes, but not before rolling them in an overly-exaggerated manner in order to illustrate his feelings of Sasuke's secrecy. His partner mumbled something quickly in Japanese, and then he began to shift. Sasuke shifted between his legs.

_Shlick_

Naruto waited impatiently, twitching his fingers a bit. He was laying with his arms crossed over his chest, and he was all too aware of his position. It was too open to make him feel comfortable, but then again, he hadn't been comfortable since last Thursday. What was one more bit of awkwardness to the pile of it towering over his senses?

Sasuke was finished with whatever it was he had been doing. He left both hands at his legs now, one damp with what Naruto assumed to be oil. They spread his legs upwards instead of outwards this time, sliding over the back of his knees and pushing them up. Naruto's arms uncrossed themselves and his hands went to brace themselves on the carpet. "What are you--?" His legs were propped up and over Sasuke's shoulders then and the hands slid down once more, fondling his ass for a moment or two, spreading his cheeks, fingering Naruto for a moment. The breath caught in Naruto's throat. Something pressed up against him then, and for a wild moment, Naruto thought his fingers were back, but it felt different.

By the time Naruto figured out what it was Sasuke had pressed against him, and was already pushing inside. Naruto yelped, but his body was bent in a way that prevented him from squirming away. His arms were spread at his sides, and he struggled to wrap them around his own legs to reach Sasuke's shoulders. His partner was leaning heavily over the backs of his legs, so close to Naruto's face he could feel his breath. Naruto's eyes were opened, taking in the slightly pained expression on Sasuke's face.

"S-stop!" Naruto pleaded. "Hold on! Fuck, _Sasuke! Sasuke! _This is d-d-ahh! Different than your fucking fingers! It's too big, it won't _fit_, get the fuck off! Get out!" Naruto feebly pushed at Sasuke's shoulders, half-heartedly trying to pull away. Sasuke was still pushing in, ignoring him. Despite the ripping pain that was close to sending his mind teetering over the edge of a cliff, he was still curious. Sasuke was right. He hadn't lied to him yet. Naruto couldn't think of a reason as to why he would start now.

"C-careful," Naruto hissed. His head craned backwards, face contorted in pain. "Be c-_careful_."

"Stop moving," Sasuke breathed. Even though his forehead was wrinkled with obvious pain, his obsidian eyes were heated, voice laced with pleasure. Sasuke was enjoying it. "Relax. It feel good soon."

Naruto couldn't tell if Sasuke was all the way in, but he was moving back, retracting himself, the movement bringing on all new sorts of pain. He moved forward again, urging himself inwards, deeper than before and at a quicker pace. It hurt--_God it hurts, __**fuck**_--but the pain hadn't grown worse. Naruto took solace in that.

"Mine," Sasuke whispered, the word ghosting over Naruto's mouth.

It was the longest minute of Naruto's life, but like every minute, eventually the sixty seconds ran out, and he could breathe again. And as each breath grew easier, the pain became easier to handle. And with bearable pain came an annoying pain, until that pain turned into a mere annoyance. Just a small, unavoidable nuisance that was made better by the new sensations creeping up Naruto's spine.

_He was right_, Naruto thought hazily, body racked with exertion. He arched his body, trying to take him in deeper. _It feels good._

Naruto shifted his head to the side, breathing heavily through his nose, clenching his eyes tight shut. His lungs were burning, and the heat from Sasuke's breath was making it difficult. His mouth searched for cooler, fresher air. A smooth hand that swayed slightly cupped his cheek, and a right eye peered open with wavering vision to see pale fingers, trembling slightly.

"Look at me," Sasuke pleaded with bated breath. "Naruto, look at me."

Naruto did, his eyes lingering on a pale neck that bobbed as Sasuke swallowed, the Adam's Apple barely there. His blue eyes traced over pale lips which had become even paler and fuller as they were bitten into. Flushed, hollowed cheeks. Dark bags under eyes that looked more like shadow than signs of sleep deprivation. Onyx eyes, blazing bright with a fiery passion, wide and glittering like two giant diamonds. Black bangs were plastered into a knotty mat on his forehead and the spikes at the back of his head were limp, brushing around his shoulders. His body was drenched with sweat and it beaded across his face, tricking perspiration between his slightly parted lips.

"Say my name," Sasuke gasped, moving more slowly, powerfully.

"W--ahh!-hy?" the blond gritted, wincing but not letting his eyes break contact with the older boy's. His body moved against the carpet and he knew his back would be black and blue the next morning, but then again, so would the rest of him. The next morning. It was a foreign concept, to think of something outside the hear and now when the hear and now was so inescapable. Would Sasuke really be gone by tomorrow morning? Would Naruto be willing to ever let him go? Would he be willing to let Naruto lock them in this room forever, just so that neither of them would ever have to face the outside world again? Naruto had admitted, inadvertently, that he loved him. Was that enough? Would it change anything?

"P-please, just say it," Sasuke said absent-mindedly, picking up the pace slightly.

"N-n-nhh… Sa--"

"That's it," Sasuke encouraged. "Say it, please, say it… Say it for me…"

"Sa--"

"Say it for me."

"Sa---ahh! Sasukeee…" His eyes narrowed as Sasuke resumed a quicker pace, pushing himself more tightly, grinding down and leaning forward. With one hand he propped himself up, balancing his weight.

"Say it louder," Sasuke commanded, touching but not quite pressing down.

"S-s-Sasuke…"

"Louder, Naruto. Say it louder."

"Sasuke!"

"_Louder._"

"_Don't leave._"

Sasuke bent over him, dark eyes still glaze with pleasure, looking unsure of what Naruto had just said. "Don't leave me," Naruto murmured, watching Sasuke through slanted eyes, gaze wavering as his eyes began to sting. "Don't. Stay. _Sasuke!"_

The raven groaned and turned his face away, biting into his shoulder as a means of distraction, lustily murmuring Naruto's name against his skin as Naruto cried out his. Eventually, the word "Mine" began to slip into the mantra, and then the raven was chanting that.

"Mine," he growled. "All mine. Say it."

Naruto shook his head once. "Say you won't leave."

"I _can't,_" Sasuke hissed. "Tell me you are mine," Sasuke ordered instead. "All mine. No one else's. Say it. Tell me it. Tell me you are mine."

"N-no…" Why wouldn't he agree? Naruto wondered. He'd given Sasuke more in the matter of a few hours than he'd ever given to anyone in his entire life, and he couldn't extract from the other one simple promise. Why? _Why?_ Just one promise in turn for all the ones Naruto had kept for him. Stay, stay, _staystaystay_.

Sasuke was back to begging now, no longer forceful, the tone of his voice a perfect match to Naruto's broken pleading. "Say that you are mine," he begged, like it would be the only thing that could save his life. Perhaps it was. "_Please!_"

"I can't," his voice raspy, "I won't. Not until you p-promise me." He spoke in fragments, coherency a thing of the past, the tightening in his stomach the only thing he knew. So close, just a bit longer, then, it would all be over. He dreaded it worse than he did dying. "Promise me. _Please!_"

"Please," Sasuke tried again, ignoring Naruto's request. "Say you're mine. You are. Say you're mine, no one else's, only mine."

"I'll be alone," Naruto whispered. "You c-can't… don't leave! Don't! L-l-listen t-t--_ahhhh!'_

"You are," Sasuke repeated, lost in his own train of thought. "You have to be. I have nothing else--I must be allowed to have this. Just this, just you. Say you're mine."

"N-no… Nngh, Sasuke…"

"Naruto," Sasuke returned in kind. "Just say it, that all I need. Tell me you're mine."

"Tell me you'll stay…."

_Spinning, spinning, the world can't stop spinning, how is his voice still right-side up?_

"Nothing is mine," Sasuke whispered brokenly, and with a start, Naruto realized that he was crying. Twin tracks of tears cut through the beaded sweat coating his face and his nose was bunched along with his mouth, face brightening as he tried to withhold sobs. "Nothing is mine. Not even this… Not even you," Sasuke whispered. "Please… Naruto, please… belong to me. Just me. Let me have you, all of you…"

"Sasuke," Naruto cried, back arching.

"Naruto," Sasuke whispered before moaning, eyes finally shutting.

The blond arched himself up once more, so close. But he didn't want it. He wanted this to go on, to never end, because then, Sasuke would leave, and Naruto would be miserable. Worse than miserable, he'd be alone. Sasuke had spent the afternoon, the whole year, building him up, and now he was crushing him one broken promise at a time. Nevertheless, it came. Naruto cried out wordlessly, tacking on a garbled version of the older boy's name towards the end, waves of dizzying pleasure overriding his senses.

He'd been told orgasm was white. The world would suddenly be filled with light, pleasurably blinding, and causing dots to swim across your vision. That wasn't what he saw. What he saw was just as before, but in a different color. Everything was a different shade of purple, and like a malignant tumor it crept across his mind. The color of a dark beauty, he thought, something so breath-taxingly gorgeous, and one shade lighter than black. The color of violets, the color of bruises. It consumed him as he rode out the pleasure, the tightening in his stomach releasing itself. Everything was drowned in thick purple fog. He could smell it, like sweet grapes, feel it, clawing into his skin. Too dark to see anything, and the color grew darker and darker, dragging away his consciousness.

Something suddenly stilled above him, and then a weight was pressing him into the ground once more. Heavy panting washed over his sweaty skin. The color consumed him still, and he wondered what it was that Sasuke saw.

"I'm sorry," the raven whispered into his neck. There was shifting, but Naruto couldn't make out more than a blurred outline as the weight was lifted from his chest. "You give so much… and I can't give it in return. I'm sorry."

Naruto was slipping away. He barely knew what it was that Sasuke was saying, only registering the fact that the one thing he'd ever truly wanted was being denied from him. His whole life was defined now, in one moment. Like a storm, ripping him to shreds. His heart was the aftermath, bleeding, sure to be reconstructed, but never anywhere near the same.

And in those last few moments, the last before he knew he'd never see Sasuke again, he heard him whisper, "I love you."

A glint of something shiny caught his attention, but only for a split second. The sun had set, he realized. The sky was black, and so were Sasuke's eyes, gleaming like stars, twin trails of tears sparkling like diamonds as they slid down skin towards eternity.

--

When Naruto woke up, Sasuke wasn't there.

He lay there for a few long moments, studying the apartment in the darkness. He expected it to look different at night, but it didn't. It was like seeing an apple in the day and an apple in the dark. He still knew it was red, knew that it would taste the same, even though appearance told him otherwise.

He drew himself up slowly, and let reality settle in. Sasuke could have been in the bathroom, or changing in his bedroom, but Naruto knew that he wasn't. The world was quiet and still, and he, Naruto, was alone.

_"I'm sorry."_

_"I love you."_

Naruto wondered what it would be like to get shot in the heart. He doubted that it could come close to rivaling betrayal.

Naruto's skin felt stiff, like he'd been sunburned. When he loved his legs, he felt them stick to the carpet. He gently shifted onto his knees, stayed that way for a few moments and clenched his eyes shut tightly, riding the pain out. It hurt to move. After a minute, he stood slowly. He shifted his hips, felt the pain, and decided it was bearable. He took another minute to decide if he wanted to wash off, to at least clean off his face. He decided not to. His clothes were by his feet. It took another minute to gather them, wincing as he bent to pick them up. There was a near-constant burning sensation behind his eyes, a rancid lump pitted deeply in his throat. He was going to cry, and he wanted to. But he couldn't. There was nothing there.

When he was dressed, he looked around. On the floor was a half-empty bottle of extra virgin olive oil. There was a quilt on the floor, and he realized that Sasuke had covered him before the blanket had fallen off. The curtains were drawn so that only a thin line of black sky could be seen between the gaps. Nothing else had changed.

Naruto saw that his bag was where he had left it. The papers from Sasuke's homework were still scattered across the living room floor. It seemed centuries ago. Those papers, that bag, shouldn't be here. This was a place where nothing from the outside world should be allowed in. Naruto, however, couldn't let himself move them. To throw them in the trash can, to throw them out the window. He didn't even want to even look at them. It seemed sacrilegious.

He wanted to look around. To maybe fine a hint as to where Sasuke had gone, or where he was leaving for tomorrow. He wanted to know what it was like, where Sasuke lived. But that too seemed sacrilegious.

So Naruto limped to the door, opened it, debated locking it. Sasuke seemed the type not to forget things like keys. He locked it, aware that this would mean he couldn't reenter.

He shut the door firmly behind him. The loneliness increased tenfold. Everything had turned upside down. Suddenly, a monster was glaring at him from down the hallway. Its hackles were raised. The darkness was closing in. The light bulbs on the ceiling glared crookedly down at him. He had to get back inside, where it was safe. Even if Sasuke never returned for him, even if he was alone in that apartment _for the rest of his goddamned life_, he would be happy. He would lie on that same patch of carpet every night for the rest of his life. He would sit himself in that red light for every sunset there ever was for the rest of his life. _The rest of his life_. It was a choice between loneliness, and an unbearably barren life. He chose the former.

The monster from the darkness crept closer. Naruto spun around, yanked on the doorknob, and remembered then that he had locked it. He began to pound on it, knowing that no one would answer. He screamed, knowing no one would answer. No one was home.

"Sasuke! Sasuke! _Sasuke! SASUKE!"_

_Poundpoundpound_

His heart beat uncontrollably.

_Poundpoundpound_

His hands were going numb.

"_SASUKE! SASUKE!"_

"What is going on here!?"

Naruto recognized that voice. He turned, and found that in place of the monster, there was the doorman from before. He looked angry and pompous, just like he had before. It was like waking up from a long nap in the middle of the day. It felt like Naruto was both in the same place he'd been hours earlier, and like he was ten years in the future.

And his eyes. Those narrow, shrew eyes, like livid mirrors, reflecting back to Naruto the true monster in the hallway. He saw his own angry, haggard, aged face, so old in a boy so young.

"Is something the matter?" the doorman asked in his nasally, cruel voice. Naruto couldn't be angry. He was an old man who had nothing accomplished in his life but becoming a doorman at a ritzy apartment complex. He had every right to be bitter.

And Naruto had every right to feel dead.

"Hey," the old man said as Naruto brushed by him. "Wait a--"

Naruto knew that he didn't care enough to press any further. He couldn't hear any footsteps following after him. He was alone when he got to the elevator, and he didn't turn to look at the monster reflected in the man's eyes. He waited until he heard the doors slide shut with a mechanical hiss behind him before turning. He folded his aching hands into his pockets and envisioned himself home. Home, with its barren walls, comforting amber glow, wide expanse of solid carpet, the smell of smoke that was only good because he knew that there would be no fire following it.

He left the apartment building without any further human contact. There was no one in the lobby, nor the office. Naruto wondered how late it really was. He wondered how many people he'd woken up with his screaming.

He wondered how many had heard, but simply hadn't the guts to do a thing about it.

The outside world was just as quiet as it was inside the apartment building. Naruto walked in silence for a long while, thoughts blank, and ignoring the temporary insanity that drove away any and all thinking processes. Naruto didn't need to think. Thinking would tear the rest of him apart. What was left, he had to keep. He had to at least keep it for Iruka's sake.

Until he heard voices.

"Hey… Hey, Uzumaki! Is that you, Uzumaki!?"

It was sickeningly comforting to feel the fear in his stomach at those words. Naruto recognized him, of course, even if it had never been that close. They were somewhere behind him, and Naruto knew that to get out of this with the most minimal amount of damage possible, he'd have to show a backbone, turn, and face them. But unfortunately, Sasuke hadn't broken him quite far enough. He could compare the feeling to a scraped knee behind the ripped knee of a brand new pair of jeans. Expensive jeans, completely ruined, with only a scrape to show for it, one that didn't even bleed, only stung for a few hours and didn't so much as bruise. If something was to be ruined, there should be a suitable amount of damage to show for it.

So Naruto kept on walking.

"Hey! Ha ha, shut up, just a sec. Hey, Uzumaki! Where ya runnin' off to, ya crazy faggot?"

A heavy arm encircled Naruto's sagging shoulders, and the nauseating smell of cigarette smoke and stale beer filled his senses. Shadows swiveled into his line of vision. He wondered if they could smell him over their own nauseating stench.

"How're you doin', fag?" Kisame asked in his gravely voice, squeezing Naruto's shoulder and shaking it like he would a friend, although he probably wouldn't grip a friend's shoulder hard enough to bruise like he was doing now. "Haven't seen you around lately. What's up with that, huh?" Naruto heard laughter in the background. Combining that with the numbers of footfalls he heard, Naruto guessed that he had three of his cronies with him. Maybe four. He didn't bother to turn around to check.

"Hey, hey, lost your voice, buddy?" Kisame was laughing, his loping gate even more so due to the alcohol he'd no doubted been guzzling before he'd run into Naruto. The other boy was tall, taller than Sasuke, and probably older, too. Naruto knew he'd been held back a few grades, just as he knew he didn't have parents who gave enough of a damn to kick him back into gear. He had to have picked up that drinking habit from somewhere. And for that reason, Naruto couldn't hate him.

"The fuck is wrong with your voice, you little shit?" Kisame asked jovially. With a grungy finger, he forcefully dug it at Naruto's ear, causing the blond's head to rock on his neck. The laughter grew louder. Naruto knew this street, and knew that before they crossed the next street, there was an abandoned store at the corner. Behind it was a dark alleyway the store managers always threw their trash in, although it was abandoned and dark now from years without use. Naruto had never seen inside of it before, but knew now that he'd see it soon enough.

Kisame and his gang had picked up their pace, and the tall student was practically dragging Naruto now as he gabbed into his ear. "Where were you this late, eh, Uzumaki? At your boyfriend's house? That little Japanese fag? I heard he lives in that prissy building over there. You came from there, right?"

They were getting closer, and Naruto almost tripped over his own two feet. He was laughed at, and wondered why he couldn't (_wouldn't_) fight.

"You look like shit, buddy. He give it to you bad, huh? Do your good buddies have to go and wring his little faggot neck?" Kisame sneered. "Or is that how you like it? Fucking figured. I never understand you homos, ya know that? Hey, hey, you listening pal?"

They were at the alleyway now. Kisame took one great, overly dramatized step forward, paused, and in that short moment Naruto wondered if he should act surprised, if only for their pathetic sakes, before he was shoved into the alleyway. His back, already aching from bruises and rug burns, flared with fresh pain. Naruto grunted, wincing.

"What's wrong, you fucking monster? I thought you liked it like this?' More laughter, so dark and haunting, ugly. Naruto felt filthy in its presence. "Hey, hey, I'll make you a deal, huh? How 'bout that? Since the Jap ditched you for a guy with a bigger dick, why don't I make you a deal? I'll give you a nice punch in your fucking face and you can get on your knees and suck my dick. How 'bout that, fag face? Like th-that?" He could hardly peak coherently over the haze of alcohol, over his own egotistical amusement--he thinks he's so damned _funny­--_over his own self-loathing.

"Hey, hey!"

_Hey, hey_

_"I love you."_

_Hey, hey_

A fist garnished with several thick and clunky rings slugged him across his cheek. The side of his head slammed into the side of the building. He saw stars, bright in the darkness of the alley, illuminating their faces like the beam of a flashlight over a freshly undug grave. Slurred and grimy faces, leering, tears of hate streaming down their cheeks and their faces, making them hideous.

"Hey, you little bitch, get the _fuck _on your knees. Hey, hey! You little faggot monster, get down!"

A punch to the gut, Naruto doubled over, gasping. Heavy fingers had threaded into his hair. He'd never be able to wash away the filth they left there. Down, down, pulling him down, the hand tried but couldn't. His legs stood resolutely firm. The last man that had brought him to his knees, Naruto thought distantly, would be the only man to bring him to his knees. Because that had ruined him, once and for all. Ruined him for women, ruined him for men, too. Ruined any friendships he'd ever make. Ruined the trust he thought he had in Iruka, the one person in the world who loved him. Ruined everything.

Naruto realized then, a moment too late, just how broken he was. Why ask for more?

So when Kisame prepared to shove him to the side, to the dark ground Naruto knew he'd never be able to stand up from again, his fist flew out and Kisame's head snapped back like lightning.

His cronies stopped laughing. Naruto shakily stood his ground, stood up at every unimpressive inch of his diminutive height. They were taller than him, bigger, bulky with muscle, pumped full of alcohol-fueled rage. Naruto didn't stand a chance. But he could still stand. That counted for something. It had to!

"Grab his arms!"

_No, no, I was wrong, I'm broken enough_

It was useless. There were far too many of them for Naruto to handle alone. He didn't get a single hit in, although not for lack of trying. All too soon, his arms were captured behind his back, and he was straddling a world that wouldn't stop trying to buck him off. Everything was shaking, everything and everyone was weak, but he was weaker, _disgusting, pathetic, run, moron, be strong enough for that._

But he wasn't.

"Mother-fucking monster," Kisame spat, swiping the blood away from his cheeks. It crusted along the three long, jagged scars on the older boys neck, catching Naruto's frantic eye. Kisame noticed, and grinned. "Like 'em?" Kisame asked. "I did 'em myself."

Kisame's hand disappeared behind him and then reappeared, a black rectangle in his hand, the size of a lighter. But when Kisame flicked the catch, a blade popped up instead of a bubble of flame. "You like this, too?"

Naruto couldn't trust his voice. Afraid of what it would sound like. He jerked his head to the side, but hands were in his hair once again and forcing his face forward, naked in the darkness.

Kisame grinned. His teeth were as rotted as the rest of him. He twiddled the blade, the shiny metal dirty, grimy, spotted with flecks of rust. It caught no light.

"You're a fucking monster."

_"I love you."_

_Makes sense, I guess._

_Only another monster could ever love a monster._

"Now you can look the part." Naruto didn't trust himself to talk, or even scream, afraid he would sound like a rabid animal instead of a human. So he settled for gritting his teeth, eyes bubbling with pain, hair jerked as his head was held steady, body shaking as Kisame began to cut into his face.

--

Naruto didn't come to the realization that he was awake until he was a block away from his house. He paused at the street corner. He saw blue and red flashing lights. He kept walking, arms hanging loosely by his sides. He limped heavily and stepped slowly, each inch he gained paying him back with gratuitous amounts of pain. His skin was itchy with drying liquids; blood, sweat, semen and oil. He didn't want to know what he smelled like. Probably road kill.

His clothes clung to him, too small. He'd grown so much in one afternoon, and now he felt the world could not contain him. Or that he could not contain it, and it felt like the whole weight of the world was trying to cram itself onto his back. There was a broken nature in his gate. His blond hair smelled of rust and musk. Fingerprints left in black and blue marred his skin. He felt like a decrepit and beaten shoe box without the shoes. There was nothing left inside. There'd be nothing left in the morning. There'd be nothing left when he walked into school. When people talked to him, he wouldn't be able to understand. English didn't make sense to him anymore. He'd be empty next week, and the week after. He'd be empty in high school, and college, and the loneliness, the anger, the betrayal threatened to swallow him whole.

He could feel their rancid breath.

He could hear the whispered '_I love you_'.

He could feel their fingers around his throat.

Naruto didn't remember how he'd gotten out of that alley. He didn't recall picking himself up and off the ground without losing any piece of himself with the trash cans and the broken beer bottles where the gang had abandoned him. Naruto couldn't blame those boys for leaving him there. They hated themselves more than they could ever hate Naruto, or anyone like him. Instead, he hated someone else. Someone who gave him the sweetest words, and threw him out into the streets. He left him alone. He left him alone in school, and at home, in his town, his city, this country, this world. _Alone_.

_You let me go?_

Naruto heard voices now, and in them, Iruka's was the loudest. Strong arms, but not as strong as his had been, wrapped around his lanky figure, and spikes of pain shot through him.

"Naruto, oh God, Naruto." He heard sobbing, but at least it wasn't him this time. Swarms of men in blue shirts surrounded him, but his vision had suddenly been filled with warm brown eyes.

"Oh God, Naruto." A hand brushed his face, which Naruto just realized was burning. "Your face… what happened to your face!?"

His face? Nothing had happened to his face. _Don't let him see it. _It was the rest of him that Iruka should have been paying attention to. _It'll be the first thing that anyone ever sees. _But as if run by unseen forces, his head slowly revolved to the left, towards the windows that ran alone the bottom floor of the apartment. The white blinds had been drawn, and orange light emitted from the lamp post behind him allowed him to see. From the bottoms of his eyes down to his neck, everything was caked in blood. It looked like a mask that only covered the bottom half of his face. So much blood should not be normal, he thought. It couldn't be.

And in that buddle of blood were six distinct tracks, so dark they might as well have been black. Three on each cheek, diagonal slits, like whisker marks.

_"Now you can look the part."_

Where did he get those marks? Those marks on the streets, those marks in the dark, that made him a monster.

_"I love you."_

_"Look the part."_

What makes a monster? The things they do on their own? The things done to them?

_"You fucking monster."_

Were they right? It wasn't their fault if it was.

_I don't feel human anymore._

_"I love you."_

_No._

_"I love you."_

_No._

_Liar. Liar._

_Liarliarliar._

_"Look the part."_

_"I love you."_

_Liar._

--

The sky was dark and heavy with night now. They'd heard the last door shut around an hour ago. The digital clock on Naruto's bedside table told them it was two in the morning, but neither felt tired. Exhausted, yes, but not tired. The bed was slightly cramped with the two practically laying on each other. Sasuke promised that they could move the beds together the next day. Tonight, he was too lazy to move. Content to stay just where he was.

"Naruto," Sasuke muttered, eyes hidden in the darkness. Naruto felt his body shift beside him, causing the blanket to slip down his shoulder.

Grumbling, pulling the blanket back up and over him, he asked, "Yeah?"

"Why did you do this?"

Naruto rolled his eyes. He was too complacent to brew up a proper argument, so he went along. "Because I wanted to."

Sasuke frowned. Naruto could feel it against his forehead. "You didn't do this for me, right?" he pressed. "Because you felt guilty?"

Naruto snorted softly. "Now who's the idiot?" he asked. "I've always done what I wanted, moron. And unfortunately, that still hasn't changed."

_Everything, everything, everything on a whim, on a promise made years and years ago, between two people unfit for humanity, what a beautiful disaster this is_

Naruto leaned in and kissed him.

_Like fire_

_I love you_

Sasuke hummed softly against his lips, pressing Naruto's head into the pillow with the pressure. They kissed slowly for a long few minutes, no tongue, just soft, wet velvety lips, languidly memorizing the shape of each other's mouths, getting used to the fact that this would now be a constant craving. To feel the other's presence. To know that they existed. To hold onto, to kiss.

"I love you." Sasuke didn't say it, just mouthed it softly against Naruto's lips. "Love you."

_This is ridiculous. It's like were drunk. The hangover's going to be fantastic. I'll live with the migraine for the rest of my life if I have to, don't take this away, never again, never take t away from me._

_Don't leave me._

"I won't leave," Sasuke whispered when they drew apart from the night. He held Naruto tighter, looked him in the eye. Naruto wished he could wash away the lingering look being Sasuke's eyes, the one he still couldn't identify, but still, for now, it was fine. He'd try again later.

"I know. Go to sleep."

The pillow was soft. The love was real, as was the look in his eyes, the one Naruto would never see again. Because he didn't want to see it. Not again.

Naruto softly kissed Sasuke's naked shoulder.

All on a whim.

_I love you._


	6. Epilogue

I'm posting this and Part 5 at the same time, so read that first.... and that's it. Enjoy!

By the way, I closed down the poll on my profle page. It asked who readers believed more, Sasuke or Naruto. Sasuke won, 44 to 36.

_**-Kodak**_

"Have some composure, where is your posture? Oh, no no. You're pulling the trigger (pulling the trigger) all wrong."

Time to Dance, by _**Panic! at the Disco**_

--

Naruto sneezed. Someone blessed him under their breath as they passed, and he mumbled a quick thank you in return. He swiped underneath his nose with the back of his hand, and used the same appendage to dig through his pocket for a tissue a moment later. The other hand held up a thin stack of papers, on top the syllabus for the second half of his psychology course.

The freshly-sprung bundles of dandelions whipped at his feet as he crossed the field. It was unusually brisk for a day in the middle of Spring, and he looked forward to getting into the physical therapy building, where the air conditioner filtered out the pesky pollen and filled the room with crisp, clean air.

Before he stepped into the doors, he drew in a deep breath. As bad as his allergies were at the moment, he felt warm from the inside out as his lungs filled with fresh Spring.

He stepped inside, and nearly wished he was back mingling with the weeds.

There was a room directly across from the door, and it was slightly ajar. Naruto was surprised that anyone was even here. It was around two 'o' clock on a Saturday; most all students had finished with their midterms and were back home. But this room still contained two people, a man and a woman, and Naruto had just witnessed the latter slap the former smartly across the face.

"How…h-h-how--you mother_fucker_ how fucking _could _you?"

Her back was to him, but from the way her voice cracked at every other syllable and how her thin shoulders shook, Naruto could tell that she was crying. The eyes of the man standing across from her were dry, but his face was drawn deeply in misery, eyes pouring with so much guilt that Naruto was curious as to how they stayed put in their sockets.

"W-was I not enough?"

"It had nothing to do with you." Even his voice was dripping in guilt. Naruto didn't know what he did, but found it hard to believe that a person racked with so much pain deserved to be yelled at. It was obvious that enough damage had been done.

She went and yelled at him for another minute, and another, and yet another, all the while he stood still and took it, shoulders sunken so low that he appeared to be the smaller of the two. Naruto hovered awkwardly at the door. He had to get into that room. He had a lab due that Monday, and he wanted to burrow one of the manuals. This room had the misfortune of being the only one that carried it.

Finally, she appeared to be finished with him. She did not say good-bye, but the man's crumbling face told Naruto that the look she was giving him was more than enough. She finally turned, and Naruto got a good luck at her face. She might have been pretty, but the tears had stained her face a ruddy red color, and her mascara had drooled into the hollows of her eyes. Her lips were wide and gaping, lips shining, as she tried to contain any further cries. She swept past Naruto with a croaked, "Excuse me", and Naruto didn't see her again for the rest of his life. If he did, he wouldn't have recognized her. He worked hard to get the image out of his head.

The look the man gave him, however, would prove to be much harder to dislodge from his brain.

Guilt. Pure as white snow, plain as the nose on his face, more obvious than the color of his skin, than his gender, as real as the oxygen they both breathed.

Naruto felt sick, and decided right then that the manual could wait. The cool air-conditioned air suddenly seemed like toxic, and his lungs yearned for the throat-constricting pollen. Naruto turned on his heal, clutched the papers even tighter in his hand, and walked out the door.

It didn't really stick in his mind. Barely a blip on the radar. He thought about what kind of food he was going to pick up for dinner, since neither he nor Sasuke had woken up with the will to stomach whatever the school diner was serving. He was thinking about the paper he had due for Kakashi's class this Friday, and that he still needed to find two more book sources. He thought about how his hair had actually turned out decent-looking when he'd looked in the mirror this morning. He thought about how lucky he was, especially after witnessing such a fall out. Naruto Uzumaki had a lot on his mind, so it only made sense that he pay little attention to the spark of familiarity he felt when he saw the look in the eyes of the nameless man's face, drenched and crumbled in guilt.

The end.

Author's Notes: I'm sure at least one person will ask, so I'll say it now: The events from when they were teenagers was completely false in this chapter. What really happened was in the first chapter.

And to answer a few other questions I know I didn't clear up in here:

-Iruka's coworker overheard Kisame bragging. A bully. Bullies brag, and seldom do they have any truth to back it up.

-Sasuke's guardian is Kakashi.

-Sasuke is a manipulative son of a bitch, but he does love Naruto. He just did something incredibly and unforgivably stupid when he was sixteen, and has gone about fixing it in the worst way possible; manipulating Naruto by using what he knows. Like how Naruto is prone to doubting himself, his guilt, and the fact that Naruto's only real friend was Sasuke.

-The look Naruto sees on Sasuke's face repeatedly through the story, but can never name, is guilt. Are you sick of that word yet?

-There will be no sequel. If I ever feel like playing around with this plot again, I'll probably write part of it from Sasuke's point-of-view. I thought it was better to leave it like this.

-Yes, the spelling is bad. I'm sorry. I can't write. Really, I'm sorry. I apologize if it's disrupted your reading in any way, shape, or form.

That's it. Any other questions, please ask! Also, if you don't like to review or comment, that's fine, but I'd greatly appreciate knowing if you either liked or disliked it. If you've enjoyed reading it half as much as I've enjoyed writing it, I'll have accomplished something.

Thanks for reading!

-_**Kodak**_


End file.
